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Fossil trackway
 
 
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A fossil trackway is a type of fossil
Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
 impression, a trackway
Trackway

A trackway is an ancient route of travel for people and/or animals. In biology, a trackway can be a set of impressions in the soft earth, usually a set of footprints, left by an animal....
 made by a once living
Life

Life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit certain biological processes such as chemical reactions or other events that results in a transformation....
 organism, usually by its feet. The majority of known fossil trackways are made by fossil dinosauria, or tetrapod
Tetrapod

Tetrapods are vertebrate animals having four feet, legs or leglike appendages. Amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs/birds, and mammals are all tetrapods, and even the limbless snakes are tetrapods by descent....
s, or biped
Biped

Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an organism Motion by means of its two rear limbs, or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped , meaning "two feet" ....
s. However other animal
Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the Kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life....
 species also make trackways, for example ocean bottom-dwelling creatures.

An example of a water genus is the Sea scorpion
Sea Scorpion

Sea Scorpion may refer to:* Eurypterids, members of the extinct class Eurypterida* some members of the Cottidae family of fish including the Long-spined Sea Scorpion and Short-spined Sea Scorpion ...
 genus Hibbertopterus
Hibbertopterus

Hibbertopterus is a genus of giant sea scorpion that inhabited the swamps of Scotland during the Carboniferous.Hibbertopterus is a member of the family Hibbertoperidae, large bizarre Eurypterids found from the Upper Devonian to the end Permian....
.

The majority of fossil trackways will be foot
Foot

The foot is an anatomical structure found in many animals. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made up of one or more segments or bones, generally including claws or nails....
 impressions on land, or subsurface water, but other types of creatures will leave their distinctive species impressions.






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Encyclopedia


A fossil trackway is a type of fossil
Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
 impression, a trackway
Trackway

A trackway is an ancient route of travel for people and/or animals. In biology, a trackway can be a set of impressions in the soft earth, usually a set of footprints, left by an animal....
 made by a once living
Life

Life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit certain biological processes such as chemical reactions or other events that results in a transformation....
 organism, usually by its feet. The majority of known fossil trackways are made by fossil dinosauria, or tetrapod
Tetrapod

Tetrapods are vertebrate animals having four feet, legs or leglike appendages. Amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs/birds, and mammals are all tetrapods, and even the limbless snakes are tetrapods by descent....
s, or biped
Biped

Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an organism Motion by means of its two rear limbs, or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped , meaning "two feet" ....
s. However other animal
Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the Kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life....
 species also make trackways, for example ocean bottom-dwelling creatures.

An example of a water genus is the Sea scorpion
Sea Scorpion

Sea Scorpion may refer to:* Eurypterids, members of the extinct class Eurypterida* some members of the Cottidae family of fish including the Long-spined Sea Scorpion and Short-spined Sea Scorpion ...
 genus Hibbertopterus
Hibbertopterus

Hibbertopterus is a genus of giant sea scorpion that inhabited the swamps of Scotland during the Carboniferous.Hibbertopterus is a member of the family Hibbertoperidae, large bizarre Eurypterids found from the Upper Devonian to the end Permian....
.

The majority of fossil trackways will be foot
Foot

The foot is an anatomical structure found in many animals. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made up of one or more segments or bones, generally including claws or nails....
 impressions on land, or subsurface water, but other types of creatures will leave their distinctive species impressions. Examples of creatures supported, or partially supported, in a water
Water

Water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or States of matter, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam....
 environment are known (see Coconino Sandstone
Coconino Sandstone

Coconino Sandstone is a geologic formation that spreads across the Colorado Plateau province of the United States, including northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, Nevada, and Utah....
). The fossil "millipede
Millipede

Millipedes are arthropods that have two pairs of arthropod leg per segment . Each segment that has two pairs of legs is a result of two single segments fused together as one....
-type" genus Arthropleura
Arthropleura

Arthropleura was a 0.3?2.6 metre long relative of centipedes and millipedes, native to the Upper Carboniferous of what is now northeastern North America and Scotland....
 left its multilegged/feet trackways on land.

Notable trackways

The foremost example of the human
Human

A human being, also human or man, is a member of a species of bipedalism primates in the family Hominidae . Mitochondrial DNA evidence indicates that modern humans originated in east Africa about 200,000 years ago....
 species trackway, is the 3.7 mya
Mya

Mya may refer to:* M?a, an American R&B/pop singer and actress* Midwest Young Artists, a comprehensive youth music program* Mya , a Italian Tv channel...
 Laetoli footprints of Tanzania
Tanzania

Tanzania , officially the United Republic of Tanzania , is a country in East Africa that is bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique on the south....
.

North America trackways

The Great Plains
Great Plains

The Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and steppe which lie west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada....
 has trackway sites in the north from Nebraska
Nebraska

Nebraska is a U.S. state located on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States and Western United States.Nebraska probably gets its name from the archaic Chiwere language words ?? Br?sge or the Omaha-Ponca language N? Bth?ska meaning "flat water," after the Platte River that flows through the state....
 to Montana
Montana

Montana is a U.S. state in the Western United States. The western third of the state contains numerous mountain ranges; other 'island' ranges are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains....
, USA. Some notable areas have numerous tracks in advanced states of erosion that extend for miles with breaks in between intersecting drainage areas, the trackways continuing on the opposite sides of the drainages.

See also

  • Trackway
    Trackway

    A trackway is an ancient route of travel for people and/or animals. In biology, a trackway can be a set of impressions in the soft earth, usually a set of footprints, left by an animal....
  • Ancient trackway
    Ancient trackway

    Ancient trackway can refer to any track or trail whose origin is lost in antiquity. Such paths existed from the earliest prehistoric times and in every inhabited part of the globe....
  • Trace fossil
    Trace fossil

    Trace fossils, also called ichnofossils , are geological records of biological activity. Trace fossils may be impressions made on the substrate by an organism: for example, burrows, borings , footprints and feeding marks, and root cavities....


External links

Dinosaur trackways:
  • ; Photo from Dakota Formation
    Dakota Formation

    The Dakota Formation is composed of sedimentary rocks deposited on the east side of the Late Cretaceous seaway. F.B. Meek and F.V. Hayden named it for exposures along the Missouri River near Dakota City, Nebraska, Nebraska....
    , Colorado, USA