Historical and Comparative Study of the First Spanish Vertebrate Paleoichnological Record and Bibliographic Review of the Spanish Chirotheriid Footprints

Abstract

In 1897, Salvador Calderón y Arana published a study of the first vertebrate footprint from Spain. It was found in the Buntsandstein of Rillo de Gallo (Guadalajara), probably in the Rillo Mudstone and Sandstone Formation (middle Anisian-Landian). This isolated left pes imprint was classified as “Cheirotherium” sp. We conducted a historical study of this specimen, mentioned by several authors for more than a century, but never analyzed in detail. This well-preserved footprint, in which skin marks are present, is described here. Its characters are compared with those of valid chirotheriid ichnogenera. This work is complemented with a bibliographic analysis of the chirotheriid footprints recorded in Spain. This record is remarkable for its abundance and ichnodiversity.

Keywords:

• First paleoichnological record
• Rillo de Gallo
• Triassic
• Spain
• Chirotheriid footprint

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I.D.M. benefited from a pre-doctoral research grant of University of La Rioja and Palaeontological Heritage Foundation of La Rioja. I.D.M. thanks La Rioja Government for the Fomenta Project (2008/02). A.P.G. is funded by the FPU subprogramme of the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación” (ref. AP2007-00873). The authors thank Patricia Pérez Dios for access to material, Nuria Alfaro in revising the English text, Dr. Félix Pérez-Lorente for his comments on a preliminary version of the manuscript, and Drs. Murray Gingras, Hendrik Klein, Marco Avanzini, Peter L. Falkingham, and an anonymous reviewer for comments and suggestions.