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Structures previously suggested to be footprints or tracks, but which have been little described, were observed within Quaternary inland dunes of the European Sand Belt. Excavation of these in several localities of the eastern part of the belt in Poland reveal that they are hoofprints of various ungulate mammals, both wild and domestic, as well as footprints of humans, ranging from potentially as early as the fifth to sixth century to the 19th century or later. Trample grounds and horizons with high densities of tracks are associated with other signs of intensifying usage of dune habitats for pasture and farming, including constrained movement of livestock, relatively well-developed paleosols, and evidence of ploughing. The presence of such abundant life traces not only reflects the presence of individual animals and people in an area, but sheds light on the potential processes and feedbacks that the tracemakers were involved in, in terms of maintaining and modifying the habitats themselves, which were dynamic and changeable. Footprints and their associated sedimentological records can be integrated with archaeological and historical data to analyse anthropogenic influence through time on physical landscapes and on the wild biota.

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Soft sediment deformation structures (SSDS) occur in finegrained sediments of various depositional environments and ages.Gravitationally unstable density gradients are a prevalent cause of soft sediment deformation, resulting in the development of load structures, pseudonodules and drop-like structures, among others (Anketell et al., 1970). SSDS can display similar morphologies independent of their trigger mechanism (Owen, 1996). In the Quaternary extraglacial deposits of Central Europe, occurrences of SSDS were most frequently ascribed to seismogenic (Van Loon et al., 2016) and cryogenic triggers (Petera-Zganiacz & Dzieduszyńska, 2017).Deformation may also be triggered by sudden stress exerted by, for example, flood waters (Owen, 2003). The regional context is therefore essential for recognition of the trigger (Moretti & Van Loon, 2014). An occurrence of SSDS in a seismically active area, however, does not imply their origin was seismic (Rana et al., 2016). Interpretation of the origin of SSDS can be additionally hindered due to overlapping actions of different triggers (Pisarska-Jamroży et al., 2019).An unusual layer, containing very regular SSDS that resemble a 3D sine wave, has been recently found at the Gołąb site in eastern Poland (Figure 1). The present study aims to document a novel geometry of SSDS found at the Gołąb site and to provide an explanation of their unusual regularity.