Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of Europe

by Lockley, M. G.

• ISBN13: 9780231107105
• ISBN10: 0231107102
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

The long and distinguished tradition of tracking dinosaurs and other extinct animals in Europe dates back to the 1830s. Yet this venerable tradition of scientific activity cannot compare in magnitude and scope with the unprecedented spate of discovery and documentation of the last few years. Now, following on the heels of his Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of the Western United States, Martin Lockley teams up with Christian Meyer to present an up to date synthesis of the recent findings in the field of European fossil footprints. Drawing extensively on their own research results from studies in Britain, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, and elsewhere, the authors create a dynamic picture of mammal, reptile, bird, and amphibian "track-makers" throughout more than 300 million years of vertebrate evolution, placed in the context of Europe's changing ancient environments. Beginning with an introduction to tracking and a history of the European tracking tradition, Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of Europe then charts a broad path of evolutionary proliferation from the proto-dinosaurs of the Early Triassic period to the dinosaurs' decline and disappearance in the Upper Cretaceous. The survey continues into the age of mammals and birds, ending with the cave art of our Paleolithic ancestors.

Author Biography

Martin Lockley is professor of geology and director of the Dinosaur Trackers Research Group at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Dinosaur-Tracking Renaissance in Europe	xi
Acknowledgments	xvii
Introduction to Tracking	1	(24)
The Importance of Fossil Footprints	1	(1)
How to Study Ancient Tracks	2	(2)
Individual Behavior	4	(3)
Where to Go Tracking	7	(1)
Naming Footprints	8	(1)
Who Dun It? Identifying Ancient Trackmakers	9	(1)
Time and Time Again	10	(1)
Collecting Footprint Data	11	(2)
Social Behavior	13	(2)
Using Trackways to Read Ancient Ecology: The Ichnofacies Concept	15	(1)
Tracks and Bones: Two Pieces of the Incomplete Puzzle	16	(1)
The Mysteries of Track Preservation	17	(8)
The Tradition of Tracking Dinosaurs in Europe	25	(28)
Earliest Discoveries	25	(3)
The Oldest European Trackmakers	28	(7)
Dragging Through the Devonian	29	(2)
Cruising the Carboniferous	31	(4)
Of Deserts and Swamps	35	(3)
Rotliegendes: Permian Trackway Heaven	38	(6)
The German Summit Conference	44	(2)
Stuck in the Mud: The Complete Trace of a Hammerhead Amphibian	46	(1)
The First Pareiasaur Trackway	47	(1)
Pangaean Globetrotters	48	(5)
Dawn of the Mesozoic: The Early and Middle Triassic	53	(26)
The Story of Chirotherium: The Dawn of the Archosaurs	53	(6)
Sex in the Footprint Bed	59	(1)
Tracks as Keys to Evolution and Locomotion	59	(5)
Lizard Ancestors and Proto-mammals with Hairy Feet	64	(3)
The World's Oldest Dinosaur Tracks: Fact, Fiction, and Controversy	67	(4)
Future Directions	71	(8)
The First Dinosaurs: The Late Triassic Epoch	79	(26)
Welsh Dinosaurs at the Jolly Sailor Pub	79	(5)
The March of the Prosauropods	84	(4)
Learning Tracking from the Bushmen: ``C'est l'Afrique''	88	(3)
A Beautiful but Elusive Track	91	(2)
High-Altitude Tracks in the Swiss Alps	93	(2)
Von Huene's Little Dinosaur Track: Coelurosaurichnus	95	(2)
Future Directions: Digging Deeper in the Late Triassic	97	(2)
A Once Green and Pleasant Land	99	(6)
Early Jurassic	105	(28)
Noah's Raven Visits Europe	105	(1)
France: The Le Veillon Sites	106	(5)
France: The Causses Region	111	(3)
France: Sanary sur Mer	114	(1)
Tracks from Swedish Coal Mines and Railroad Tunnels	115	(2)
Tracking in the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland	117	(5)
Trackway Evidence for the Early Origin of Stegosaurs	122	(4)
The First Sauropods? Evidence from Italy	126	(7)
The Dark Ages: Middle Jurassic	133	(18)
Dinosaurs in the Great Deltas of Yorkshire	133	(3)
Glimpse of a Dinosaur from the Dark Ages	136	(1)
The First Iberian Sauropods	137	(6)
Mr. Pooley's Enigmatic Track Discovery	143	(1)
Dinosaur Tracks from the Western Isles	144	(1)
The Tip of the Ichnologic Iceberg	145	(6)
The Age of Brontosaurs: Late Jurassic	151	(38)
Megalosaur Tracks	151	(7)
Sauropods on the Rise: Germany, Iberia, and Switzerland	158	(3)
Baby Brontosaurs	161	(5)
Social Sauropods	166	(3)
The Swiss Megatracksite	169	(2)
The Dinosaur Disco: An Ancient Stomping Ground	171	(2)
Smaller Spoor	173	(2)
Turtles and Hopping Dinosaurs	175	(3)
Spoor of the Pterosaur	178	(3)
A Note on the Brontopodus Ichnofacies and Other Carbonate Ichnofacies	181	(1)
The First Ankylosaur Tracks	182	(7)
The Age of Iguanodon: Early Cretaceous	189	(40)
Archosaurs in the Air (Pterosaurian Giants)	189	(2)
Europe's Early Birds	191	(2)
The Age of Iguanodon	193	(8)
Iguanodon and Conan Doyle's Lost World	201	(3)
La Rioja	204	(9)
More Spoor of the Pterosaur	213	(3)
Farther Along the Trail of the Elusive Ankylosaur	216	(1)
Dalmatian Dinosaurs	217	(3)
Arctic Dinosaurs	220	(9)
The End of the Dinosaur Trail: Upper Cretaceous	229	(14)
The Battle of Carenque	229	(3)
More Dalmatian Dinosaurs and Dwarfs	232	(2)
The Last of the Brontosaurs: Tracking Titanosaurs in the High Pyrenees	234	(4)
The Last European Dinosaurs	238	(5)
New Horizons	243	(30)
The Age of Mammals and Birds	243	(1)
The Quiet Dawn: Paleocene-Eocene	244	(2)
Tracking Ronzotherium, an Early Rhino	246	(2)
An Abundance of Waterfowl	248	(4)
A Miocene Menagerie	252	(3)
Tracking Ancestors of the Cat: Miocene of Spain	255	(1)
Pliocene Interlude	256	(1)
Pleistocene: Ice Age Trackmakers	257	(2)
Subterranean Tracking: Hominid Ichnology	259	(5)
Cave Art to Forensics: The Signature of Modern Humanity	264	(9)
Appendix	273	(18)
References	291	(20)
Index	311