page_title: 20th century in ichnology
section_title: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: 20th century in ichnology / 1970s
caption_attribution_description: Pareiasaurus serridens
context_page_description: The 20th century in ichnology refers to advances made between the years 1900 and 1999 in the scientific study of trace fossils, the preserved record of the behavior and physiological processes of ancient life forms, especially fossil footprints. Significant fossil trackway discoveries began almost immediately after the start of the 20th century with the 1900 discovery at Ipolytarnoc, Hungary of a wide variety of bird and mammal footprints left behind during the early Miocene. Not long after, fossil Iguanodon footprints were discovered in Sussex, England, a discovery that probably served as the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.
  Several enduring mysteries from the 19th century continued to vex ichnologists, like the identity of the Chirotherium trackmaker. Renowned paleontologist Franz von Nopcsa attributed the ichnogenus to the prosauropod dinosaur Plateosaurus, despite an apparent mismatch between its number of toes and the preserved digit traces of Chirotherium. Von Nopcsa explained the discrepancy by arguing that one of the impressions in the Chirotherium tracks was left by a soft tissue structure that did not fossilize.
context_section_description: Mid: Dinosaur tracks of the ichnogenera Atreipus and Grallator were discovered in a quarry that straddles the Virginia-North Carolina border. These may be the oldest dinosaur tracks known in the eastern United States.
  Late: The publication of a formula capable of inferring the life speeds of dinosaurs from their fossil trackways brought further attention to Barnum Brown's claim of having discovered the tracks of a mystery dinosaur with an abnormally long stride length. Scientists instantly recognized the footprints as belonging to a duck-billed hadrosaur rather than some completely unknown dinosaur, but the validity of the trackway's stride length proved controversial. Dale Russell and Pierre Beland accepted Brown's measurement and calculated the trackmaker as moving at 27 kilometers and hour. Tony Thulborn argued that a footprint left by another dinosaur obscured a track left by the original trackmaker roughly halfway between the prints composing the supposedly enormous stride. This implied that the trackmaker's stride was only half the claimed size and it was probably only traveling at about 8.5 kilometers and hour.
  1970
  Leonard Wills and Bill Sarjeant reported potential dinosaur footprints from Triassic rocks in Nottinghamshire and Worcestershire. Ichnotaxa reported included Coelurosaurichnus, Otozoum, and Swinertonichnus. The rocks were of uncertain age at the time of the authors writing and are now known to have been Lower Triassic. Dinosaur tracks dating to the Early Triassic would be anomalous as their skeletal remains are not known until later in the period. Not surprisingly, the dinosaurian status of the tracks reported by Wills and Sarjeant have been disputed.
  Hartmut Haubold named the Brazilian proto-mammal tracks Tetrapodichnus.
  1971
  Haubold formally named the German ichnospecies Metatetrapous valdensis from Germany's Wealden Beds. The discovery may represent fossil ankylosaur footprints.
  de Clercq and Holst published on the Upper Oligocene bird tracks of Lucerne, Switzerland. The researchers attributed the tracks to rails.
  Samuel Welles named two new Early Jurassic theropod ichnogenra from the Kayenta Formation of northeastern Arizona; Dilophosauripus and Kayentapus. also Hopiichnus.
  1972
  Vialov classified fossil bird footprints as members of the ichno order Avipedia.
  David Webb studied the fossil footprints left by ancient camels and determined that even these ancient forms shared modern camels' "pacing gait", where the animal moves both legs on one side of the body at the same time, unlike most mammals which move hindlimbs and forelimbs from the opposite sides of the body in each step. Webb argued that the energetic efficiency of the pacing gait enabled camels' success in desert and prairie environments where significant distances may separate food and water sources.
  Paul Olsen and Robert F. Salvia discovered dinosaur Late Triassic footprints in the Stockton Formation of Nyack Beach State Park, New York. The tracks included 12–15 cm (5-6 inch) long Grallator tracks. Possible Atreipus tracks were also found there. The regions's non-dinosaurian tracks included Apatopus, Brachychirotherium, Chirotherium, and Rhynchosauroides.
  1973
  Justin Delair and A. B. Lander reported the presence of three parallel dinosaur trackways in the Roach Stone of Herston, England.
  A significant Permian-aged fossil tracksite in the Cedar Mesa Sandstone of Utah was inundated following the creation of the Glen Canyon Dam. This tracksite preserved an apparent predator-prey interaction wherein the trail left by a small amphibian or reptile vanished at the point where it intersected with the trail left by a large carnivorous proto-mammal. Fortunately for ichnologists, plaster casts of the trackways and photographs remain available for study.
  W. J. Breed reported fossil goose footprints from the Pliocene Bidahochi Formation of Arizona.
  1974
  Kaever and de Lapparent named the new ichnogenus and species Elephanotpides barkhausensis for the poorly preserved tracks of a large quadrupedal dinosaur discovered near Barkhausen, Germany. The trackm
caption: A pareiasaur
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