Chirotherium sp.

Rob Hope (France) For many years, a great number of Permian fossil footprints have been found in the red mudstone horizons of France’s Lodéve basin (Fig. 1). I have spent some time researching the fossils of this barren region, including learning from papers written by an array of specialists, as well as visiting museum and university collections of fossils from the area. My self-appointed investigation eventually took me to an obscure and overgrown uranium quarry in the heart of the Lodévian badlands. There, I discovered in situ footprint fossils, and rocks showing ripple marks as well as the traces of ancient Permian raindrops. Fig. 1. Simplified illustration showing the geology around the area known as the Lodéve Basin, in southernFrance (Hope, 2008). Later, while researching the Lodéve region further still, I came across yet more palaeontological papers concerning a later geological time – that of the Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic (240 million years ago). And, once again, the dark mudstone fossils from this particular sequence include enigmatic fossil footprints. There are for example traces of Rotodactylus sp., which some authors have described as the trails of a primitive dinosaurian. In addition, the distinctive trace fossil, Chirotherium sp. has also been found. Fossil prints from this Triassic ichnospecies (that is, categories of morphologically distinctive trace fossils)have been excavated throughout the world and were first described in 1835, by J Kaup. During the hundred years following their initial discovery, they caused heated debate within academic society, because the pes and … Read More