Abstract
Fossils are rocks which have naturally-preserved evidence of ancient plants and animals. Body fossils of ancient animals, especially vertebrates, are considered extremely important for what they can tell us about anatomical structure. Trace fossils, on the other hand, are the preserved traces of animals that were engaged in a daily activity, such as walking, swimming, jumping, burrowing, or resting. Trace fossils were originally impressed in wet mud or sand and then preserved in solid rock. Coal mining or construction can sometimes expose the preserved traces. Trace fossils are important for what they can tell us about how ancient animals behaved.
Walker County is a remarkable source of trace fossils in Alabama. This chapter describes what trace fossils are, how they form, how they are exposed, and the types of traces found in Alabama coal mines.
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Notes
- 1.
Jennifer A. Clack, Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods, Second edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012).
- 2.
Adolf Seilacher, Trace Fossil Analysis (Berlin: Springer, 2007), Robert W. Frey, ed., The Study of Trace Fossils: A Synthesis of Principles, Problems, and Procedures in Ichnology (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1975).
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Alfred Uchman, “Treptichnus-like Traces by Insect Larvae (Diptera: Chironomidae, Tipulidae),” in Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama, ed. Ronald J. Buta et al. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Paleontological Society, 2005), 143.
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Jerry MacDonald, Earth’s First Steps: Tracking Life Before the Dinosaurs (Boulder: Johnson Printing, 1994), 62–64.
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Buta, Footprints in Stone, 62–89.
- 6.
Jack C. Pashin, “Pottsville Stratigraphy and the Union Chapel Lagerstatte,” in Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama, ed. Ronald J. Buta et al. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Paleontological Society Monograph No. 1, 2005), 40.
- 7.
Ibid., 45.
- 8.
- 9.
Truman H. Aldrich, Sr. and Walter B. Jones, “Footprints from the Coal Measures of Alabama,” (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Museum of Natural History, 1930), Museum Paper 9.
- 10.
Sebastian Voigt, David S. Berman, and Amy C. Henrici, “First Well-Established Track-Trackmaker Association of Paleozoic Tetrapods Based on Ichnotherium Trackways and Diadectid Skeletons from the Lower Permian of Germany,” Journal Of Vertebrate Paleontology 27 (2007): 553.
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Pashin, “Pottsville Stratigraphy and the Union Chapel Lagerstatte,” 46–51.
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- 13.
Seilacher, Trace Fossil Analysis, 8–9.
- 14.
Ronald J. Buta and David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Footprints in Stone: Fossil Traces of Coal-Age Tetrapods (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2016), 34–39. T. Prescott Atkinson, Ronald J. Buta, and David C. Kopaska-Merkel, “Saving the Union Chapel Mine: How a Group of Determined Amateurs Teamed with Professionals to Save a World-Class Trackway Site in Alabama,” in Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama, ed. Ronald J. Buta et al. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Paleontological Society Monograph No. 1, 2005), 191. The Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site was formerly the Union Chapel Mine. Ronald J. Buta, Jack C. Pashin, Nicholas J. Minter, et al., “Ichnology and Stratigraphy of the Crescent Valley Mine: Evidence for a Carboniferous Megatracksite in Walker County, Alabama,” in The Carboniferous-Permian Transition, ed. Spencer G. Lucas et al. (Albuquerque: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 60, 2013), 44.
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Aldrich, “Footprints from the Coal Measures of Alabama.”
- 17.
Hartmut Haubold, Ashley Allen, T. Prescott Atkinson, et al., “Interpretation of the Tetrapod Footprints from the Early Pennsylvanian of Alabama,” in Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama, ed. Ronald J. Buta et al. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Paleontological Society Monograph No. 1, 2005), 96–109.
- 18.
Ibid., 85–93.
- 19.
Buta, “Ichnology and Stratigraphy of the Crescent Valley Mine: Evidence for a Carboniferous Megatracksite in Walker County, Alabama,” 53.
- 20.
Hartmut Haubold, Ashley Allen, T. Prescott Atkinson, et al., “Interpretation of the Tetrapod Footprints from the Early Pennsylvanian of Alabama,” in Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama, ed. Ronald J. Buta et al. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Paleontological Society Monograph No. 1, 2005), 93–95.
- 21.
Anthony J. Martin and Nicholas D. Pyenson, “Behavioral Significance of Vertebrate Trace Fossils from the Union Chapel Site,” in Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama, ed. Ronald J. Buta et al. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Paleontological Society Monograph No. 1, 2005), 60–63.
- 22.
Nicholas J. Minter and Simon J. Braddy, “Walking and Jumping with Paleozoic Apterygote Insects,” Palaeontology 49 (2006): 827.
- 23.
Buta, Footprints in Stone, 211–215.
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M. Gabriela Mangano, Luis A. Buatois, Christopher G. Maples, et al., “Tonganoxichnus, a New Insect Trace from the Upper Carboniferous of Eastern Kansas,” Lethaia 30 (1997): 113.
- 25.
Buta, Footprints in Stone, 216–224.
- 26.
T. Prescott Atkinson, “Arthropod Body Fossils from the Union Chapel Mine,” in Pennsylvanian Footprints in the Black Warrior Basin of Alabama, ed. Ronald J. Buta et al. (Tuscaloosa: Alabama Paleontological Society Monograph No. 1, 2005), 169. Roy G. Beckemeyer and Michael S. Engel, “Upper Carboniferous Insects from the Pottsville Formation of Northern Alabama (Insecta: Ephemeropterida, Paleodicyopterida, Odonatoptera),” Scientific Papers, Natural History Museum, University of Kansas, 44 (2011): 1, Roy G. Beckemeyer and Michael S. Engel, “Upper Carboniferous Insects from the Pottsville Formation of Northern Alabama (Insecta: Ephemeropterida, Paleodicyopterida, Odonatoptera),” Scientific Papers, Natural History Museum, University of Kansas, 44 (2011): 1.
- 27.
Buta, “Ichnology and Stratigraphy of the Crescent Valley Mine: Evidence for a Carboniferous Megatracksite in Walker County, Alabama,” 54.
- 28.
M. Romano and B. Melendez, “An Arthropod (Meristome) Ichnocoenosis from the Carboniferous of Northwest Spain,” Ninth International Geological Congress, 5 (1985): 317.
- 29.
Buta, “Ichnology and Stratigraphy of the Crescent Valley Mine: Evidence for a Carboniferous Megatracksite in Walker County, Alabama,” 49–50.
- 30.
Ibid., 48–52.
- 31.
Martin Lockley and Judy Peterson, A Guide to Fossil Footprints of the World (Denver: University of Colorado, 2002), 58–77. Martin Lockley and Adrian P. Hunt, Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of the Western United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 166–172.
- 32.
Buta, Footprints in Stone, 29–30.
- 33.
Buta, “Ichnology and Stratigraphy of the Crescent Valley Mine: Evidence for a Carboniferous Megatracksite in Walker County, Alabama,” 45.
- 34.
Pashin, “Pottsville Stratigraphy and the Union Chapel Lagerstatte,” 46–51.
- 35.
Jack C. Pashin, quoted in Buta, “Footprints in Stone,” 129.
- 36.
Martin Lockley and Christian Meyer, Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 171.
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Buta, R.J. (2017). Trace Fossils of Alabama: Life in the Coal Age. In: Lynn, C., Glaze, A., Evans, W., Reed, L. (eds) Evolution Education in the American South. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95139-0_12
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