Fossil Studies

The role of vertebrate fossils in the origin of ancient Greek myths remains an intriguing and open question. A comparative paleontological and historical assessment between Aegean Greece and Magna Graecia (Southern Italy) is presented, focusing on the Late Miocene giraffid Samotherium. The Genus is characteristic of the Greco-Iranian biogeographic province, also recorded outside its primary range in Calabria. This region was part of Magna Graecia, the extensive Southern Italian territory settled by Greek colonists who established flourishing cities from the 8th century BC onward. Whereas specific Late Miocene fossil sites in Greece are linked to geomyths, such as the bone-rich red beds of Samos associated with the monstruous Neades, no such attributions are recorded in Calabria. Although the coastline near the Greek colony of Hipponion, the modern city of Vibo Valentia, is known as the “Costa degli Dei” (Coast of the Gods), vertebrate fossils are not associated with ancient myth, whereas invertebrate fossils supported local folk traditions. These discrepancies between Greece and Calabria are likely driven by contrasting taphonomic contexts and differences in fossil exposure, discoverability, and skeletal element representation.

Newly discovered theropod footprints are described from collapsed rock blocks derived from the Lower Cretaceous Guantou Formation at the Shangantian tracksite in Dongyang City, Zhejiang Province, eastern China. The specimens are preserved in at least 18 natural molds on a single siltstone slab. The footprint assemblage is composed of minute-sized tridactyl tracks with lengths ranging between 6.8 cm and 8.8 cm. Morphologically, these tracks exhibit a relatively wide divarication angle between digits II and IV, a low length/width ratio, weak mesaxony, and a prominent, elongate metatarsophalangeal pad associated with digit IV aligned along the long axis of digit III. Based on these diagnostic traits, the new tracks are tentatively assigned to Jialingpus isp. The reduced mesaxony and incomplete expression of the medial metatarsophalangeal area behind digit II represent morphometric and preservation-driven variations characteristic of Cretaceous Jialingpus material. Kinematic estimates from three distinct single-step trackways indicate that the trackmakers were moving at slow walking speeds of 0.4–0.8 m/s (1.4–2.9 km/h). This discovery enriches the mid-Cretaceous dinosaur track diversity in Zhejiang Province and provides important ichnological insights into the evolution and morphometric variation of Jialingpus across the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary.

Reported trace fossils from the Clifton Formation, New Brunswick, Canada, are limited to a single occurrence of a temnospondyl trackway and invertebrate trackways identified in the Pennsylvanian continental strata. Our study builds on this with a description of a horizontal burrow interpreted to have been constructed by a fossorial tetrapod. Historically, limited focus has been placed on tetrapod burrow activity and its ichnotaxonomy, so our findings also have broader implications. We report on the first horizontal burrow collected from the Clifton Formation near the township of Stonehaven, with unique features that include transversely oriented angular mudstone intraclasts without a meniscate backfill. We propose a new ichnotaxon, Thrasmaichnus hindsi igen. et isp. nov., and interpret the trace as having been made by a fossorial tetrapod. Thrasmaichnus hindsi is the first described Pennsylvanian-age tetrapod burrow, whereas Pennsylvanian-age fossorial tetrapods are currently only known from body fossils.