Abstract

To apply a Linnaean-style classification to the footprints of dinosaurs and other fossil vertebrates is innately absurd, because they represent behavior and do not necessarily indicate affinity. They are the effects of the interaction of the animal with the sediment over which it was passing – sedimentary structures, not actual remains of living creatures. They can be identified only to the variable extent that the nature of the activity and the physical character of the sediment permit. Because changes of behavior and of position within the substrate can produce different structures, it is difficult to decide on the limits for taxa.

The history of past approaches to the naming of fossil vertebrate footprints is detailed. It is urged that names should henceforward be based essentially on morphology, not (or not entirely) on systematic affinity, and that changing behavior should be recognized by nomenclatural differentiation. It is further urged that no single classificatory hierarchy should be imposed but that alternative approaches, each appropriate to the nature of the research undertaken, should be considered equally acceptable.

Historical background

From the time of the first scientific discovery of fossil vertebrate footprints in Scotland during the late 1820's there has been an attempt, not only to identify the trackmakers, but also to give names to the tracks. On the basis of experiments in trackmaking by William Buckland (see Sarjeant 1974, pp. 268–269), those earliest-discovered tracks were considered to have been made by tortoises and the name Testudo duncani came to be applied to them.