Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of Europe

About this book

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.

Contents

1. Introduction to Tracking
- The Importance of Fossil Footprints
- How to Study Ancient Tracks
- Individual Behavior
- Where to Go Tracking
- Naming Footprints
- Who Dun It? Identifying Ancient Trackmakers
- Time and Time Again
- Collecting Footprint Data
- Social Behavior
- Using Trackways to Read Ancient Ecology: The Ichnofacies Concept
- Tracks and Bones: Two Pieces of an Incomplete Puzzle
- The Mysteries of Track Preservation

2. The Tradition of Tracking Dinosaurs in Europe
- Earliest Discoveries
- The Oldest European Trackmakers:
- I: Dragging Through the Devonian
- II: Cruising in the Carboniferous
- Of Deserts and Swamps
- Rotligiendes: Permian Trackway Heaven
- The German Summit Conference
- Stuck in the Mud: The Complete Trace of a Hammerhead Amphibian
- The First Pareiasaur Trackway
- Pangean Globetrotters

3. Dawn of the Mesozoic: The Early and Middle Triassic
- The Story of Chirotherium: The Dawn of the Archosaurs
- Sex in the Footprint Bed
- Tracks as Keys to Evolution and Locomotion
- Lizard ancestors and Proto-mammals with Hairy Feet
- The World's Oldest Dinosaur Tracks: Fact, Fiction, and Controversy
- Future Directions

4. The First Dinosaurs: The Late Triassic Epoch
- Welsh Dinosaurs at the Jolly Sailor Pub
- The March of the Prosauropods
- Learning Tracking from the Bushmen: "C'est l'Afrique''
- A Beautiful but Elusive Track
- High-Altitude Tracks in the Swiss Alps
- von Huene's Little Dinosaur Track: Coelurosaurichus
- Future Directions: Digging Deeper in the Late Triassic
- A Once Green and Pleasant Land

5. Early Jurassic
- Noah's Raven Visits Europe
- France: The Le Veillon Sites
- France: The Causses Region
- France: Sanary sur Mer
- Tracks from Swedish Coal Mines and Railroad Tunnels
- Tracking Dinosaurs in the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland
- Trackway Evidence for the Early Origin of Stegosaurs
- The First Sauropods? Evidence from Italy

6. The Dark Ages: Middle Jurassic
- Dinosaurs in the Great Deltas of Yorkshire
- Glimpse of a Dinosaur from the Dark Ages
- The First Iberian Sauropods
- Mr. Pooley's Enigmatic Track Discovery
- Dinosaur Tracks from the Western Isles
- The Tip of the Ichnologic Iceberg

7. The Age of Brontosaurs: Late Jurassic
- Megalosaur Tracks
- Sauropods on the Rise: Germany, Iberia, and Switzerland
- Baby Brontosaurs
- Social Sauropods
- The Swiss Megatracksite
- The Dinosaur Disco: An Ancient Stomping Ground
- Smaller Spoor
- Turtles and Hopping Dinosaurs
- Spoor of the Pterosaur
- A Note on the Brontopodus Ichnofacies, and Other Carbonate Ichnofacies
- The First Ankylosaur Tracks

8. The Age of Iguanodon: Early Cretaceous
- Archosaurs in the Air (Pterosaurian Giants)
- Europe's Early Birds
- The Age of Iguanodon
- Iguanodon and Conan Doyle's Lost World
- La Rioja
- Theropod Tracks
- Sauropod Tracks
- Ornithopod Tracks
- More Spoor of the Pterosaur
- Farther Along the Trail of the Elusive Ankylosaur
- Dalmatian Dinosaurs
- Arctic Dinosaurs

9. The End of the Dinosaur Trail: Upper Cretaceous
- The Battle of Carenque
- More Dalmatian Dinosaurs
- The Last of the Brontosaurs: Tracking Titanosaurs in the High Pyrenees
- The Last European Dinosaurs

10. New Horizons
- The Age of Mammals and Birds
- The Quiet Dawn: Paleocene-Eocene
- Oligocene Act I: Tracking Ronzotherium, an Early Rhino
- Oligocene Act II. An Abundance of Waterfowl
- A Miocene Menagerie
- Tracking Ancestors of the Cat: Miocene of Spain
- Pliocene Interlude
- Pleistocene: Ice Age Trackmakers
- Subterranean Tracking: Hominid Ichnology
- Cave Art to Forensics: The Signature of Modern Humanity

Customer Reviews

Biography

Martin Lockley is professor of geology and director of the Dinosaur Trackers Research Group at the University of Colorado, Denver, and is the author of five books on fossil footprints and several hundred scientific articles on diverse subjects in paleontology. Christian Meyer is currently an invited professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland.