Ephemeral, Subfossil Mammalian, Avian and Hominid Footprints within Flandrian Sediment Exposures at Formby Point, Sefton Coast, North West England

Abstract

Coastal erosion around Formby Point occasionally reveals in the upper intertidal-zone discontinuous, laminated ‘outcrops’ of Flandrian sediments that formed between 7,500 and 4,500 years ago. Within some strata, footprints of animals, birds and humans have been preserved. Once the footprints are exposed by the tides and longshore currents, those same natural forces bring about their inevitable destruction. In addition, a first millennium B.C., dune-edge peat stratum contains hoofprints of domestic oxen. This exposure is also being subjected to destructive coastline erosion.

The footprints demonstrate how the Sefton Coast was populated in the past. Their importance to understanding the prehistory of the locality is outlined, as is the wider significance of ichnology to archaeological and palaeoenvironmental studies.

Keywords:

• Formby Point
• Sefton Coast
• Flandrian sediments
• Mesolithic
• Neolithic
• Iron Age
• footprints
• palaeoenvironment

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to acknowledge, with thanks, Professor Jeong-Yul Kim's kind invitation and generous efforts in providing the financial assistance to enable me to participate in the International Symposium on Quaternary Footprints of Hominids and Other Vertebrates held on Jeju Island, Korea, on October 9–10, 2004. I am grateful, too, to Professor Jeong-Yul Kim and Professor Martin Lockley for their most useful comments and constructive suggestions for helping me revise and improve my original Jeju Symposium paper. Special thanks, too, to retired chiropodist and much respected amateur osteo-archaeologist, Phyllis Jackson of Newent, Gloucestershire for helping interpret the footprint shown in Figure 19. I also greatly appreciate Professor Michael Tooley having made available to me photocopies of his correspondence with Dr Juliet Jewell when I first began my research.