A thick Tethyan multi-bed tsunami deposit preserving a dinosaur megatracksite within a coastal lagoon (Barremian, eastern Spain)

A Thick multiple-bed tsunami deposit consisting of sandstones and conglomerates has been discovered and investigated in the Camarillas Formation (~130.6–128.4Ma, Barremian age) in eastern Spain. The tsunami deposit is interbedded within red mudstones deposited in mud flats of a back-barrier system. It crops out along 7km in length and at its base a great number of dinosaur tracks assigned to sauropods, ornithopods and theropods have been preserved as natural casts; then constituting an exceptional regional megatracksite associated with tsunami deposits. On the basis of sedimentological features and the lateral and vertical architecture of the involved lithofacies, up to five couplets of inflow-backflow deposits, formed by a tsunami wave train, have been recognized overlying the tracks. Although sedimentation mainly took place during backflow currents, inflows led to the removal of sand from a fronting barrier island and the rip-up of lagoonal carbonate and clay pebbles, depositing them in the protected back-barrier lagoon. Its unusually great thickness is interpreted, among others, as being the result of the filling of the previous low topography of the back-barrier lagoon.