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. A fossil trackway is the fossilized imprint of a trackway. Trackways have been found all over the world. They are especially valuable for determining some characteristics of life-forms, such as behavior. Thus some trackways for hominids in Africa showed that they lived together and were not solitary. The study of trackways is an aspect of ichnology, the study of marks left by living organisms. Since identifying the makers of trackways has not ordinarily proved possible, trackway-makers are given the conventional genus name "Ichniotherium", "marking creature".

A possible first connection of a trackway with the vertebrate that left it was published by Drs. Sebastian Voigt and David Berman and Amy Henrici in the 12 September 2007 issue of "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology". The paleontologists who made the connection were aided by unusually detailed trackways left in fine-grained Lower Permian mud of the Tambach Formation in central Germany, together with exceptionally complete fossilised skeletons in the same 290 million-year-old strata. They matched the two most common trackways with the two most common fossils, two reptile-like herbivores known as "Diadectes absitus" (with the trackway pseudonym "Ichniotherium cottae") and "Orobates pabsti" (with the trackway pseudonym of "Orobates pabsti"). [ [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070915092239.htm "Science Daily", "Who Went There? Matching Fossil Tracks With Their Makers"] , 15 September 2007.]

Example animal or hominid trackways

*Theropod dinosaurs, near Las Cruces, New Mexico
*Dinosaurs, Glen Rose Formation, Texas
*Dinosaurs, England
*Dinosaurs, China
*Hominids, Africa
*Paleozoic trackways near Las Cruces, New Mexico

Example ancient military trackways or drovers' roads

*Causey Mounth
*Elsick Mounth

ee also

*Drovers' road
*Ichnite
*Animal tracks

Notes

External links

* [http://www.stadiumweb.com/reprints/reprints.html Twenty-one texts on dinosaur tracks from the coal mines of central Utah]


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • Trackway — Track way , n. Any of two or more narrow paths, of steel, smooth stone, or the like, laid in a public roadway otherwise formed of an inferior pavement, as cobblestones, to provide an easy way for wheels. [Webster 1913 Suppl.] …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • trackway — ► NOUN ▪ a path formed by the repeated treading of people or animals …   English terms dictionary

  • Trackway (disambiguation) — Trackway can refer to:Technical terms* Trackway mdash;Trackway can refer to animal or human tracks. Military trackways, occur because of high use, or high volume. Trackways also occurred in Central America and South American historical societies …   Wikipedia

  • trackway — noun Date: 1818 1. a beaten or trodden path 2. a series of fossil footprints (as of a dinosaur) …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • trackway — /trak way /, n. 1. railway (def. 3). 2. a path or roadway; track. [1810 20; TRACK + WAY1] * * * …   Universalium

  • trackway — noun A set of footprints left in soft ground by a human or animal; especially such a fossilized track …   Wiktionary

  • trackway — noun a path formed by the repeated treading of people or animals …   English new terms dictionary

  • trackway — n. a beaten path; an ancient roadway …   Useful english dictionary

  • Corlea Trackway — The Corlea Trackway in 2009 The Corlea Trackway is an Iron Age trackway, or togher, near the village of Kenagh, south of Longford town, County Longford, in the Republic of Ireland. It was known locally as the Danes Road. It can be found in the… …   Wikipedia

  • Fossil trackway — A fossil trackway is a type of fossil impression, a trackway made by a once living organism, usually by its feet. The majority of known fossil trackways are made by fossil dinosauria, or tetrapods, or bipeds. However other animal species also… …   Wikipedia

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