A Mississippian trackway (Pseudobradypus ichnosp.) from the Enragé Formation, New Brunswick, Canada

Abstract

A tetrapod trackway, identified as Pseudobradypus ichnosp., from the Upper Mississippian Enragé Formation represents one of the few occurrences of fossil vertebrate tracks documented in New Brunswick. It was collected from red mudstone near Green Creek, Upper Rockport, New Brunswick on the Maringouin Peninsula. The Enragé Formation is Namurian age and is the top of the Mabou Group in New Brunswick. As Pseudobradypus is often attributed to a captorhinomorph reptile trackmaker, this specimen may be considered among the early evidence for reptiles (amniotes). RÉSUMÉUn sillon de tétrapode, identifié à titre de Pseudobradypus ichnosp., de la Formation du Mississippien supérieur d'Enragé, représente l'un des rares cas de présence d'empreintes de vertébré fossile documentés au Nouveau-Brunswick. On a prélevé ces empreintes dans du mudstone rouge près de la crique Green, à Upper Rockport (Nouveau-Brunswick), sur la péninsule de Maringouin. La Formation d'Enragé remonte au Namurien et se trouve au sommet du groupe de Mabou au Nouveau-Brunswick. Comme on rattache souvent le Pseudobradypus à un reptile captorhinomorphe auteur d'empreintes, ce spécimen peut être considéré comme l'un des premiers signes de la présence des reptiles (amniotes). [Traduit par la redaction]

Discussion on ecology of earliest reptiles inferred from basal Pennsylvanian trackways Journal , Vol. 164, 2007, 1113–1118

“…Keighley et al are correct that these tracks are probably older than our own (although their precise age is uncertain). We also broadly agree that some of the Port Hood trackways of Keighley & Pickerill (1998) could be of reptilian origin, as could even older early Namurian trackways recently reported from New Brunswick (Wood & Miller 2007). However, in the absence of good preservation and detailed description, we consider their position as yet unproven.…”

Carboniferous tetrapod footprints from the Lublin Basin, SE Poland

“…The footprints assigned to the ichnogenus Pseudobradypus were also described from the Mississippian of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Pennsylvania (Sternberg 1933;Wood & Miller 2007;Fillmore et al 2012), and the Pennsylvanian of Nova Scotia, Ohio, Oklahoma and Germany (Carman 1927;Mitchell 1931Mitchell , 1933Sternberg 1933;Schmidt 1956Schmidt , 1963Haubold 1971;Sarjeant & Mossman 1978;Fichter 1982). Pseudobradypus is an ichnotaxon that urgently needs revision (S. Voigt, personal information) and probably subsumes footprints of completely different footprint makers.…”

Defining the morphological quality of fossil footprints. Problems and principles of preservation in tetrapod ichnology with examples from the Palaeozoic to the present

“…Several Mississippian specimens were assigned to Pseudobradypus, although this material is either classifiable as Hylopus or unclassifiable due to poor morphological preservation (e.g. Wood and Miller, 2007;Fillmore et al, 2012). Falcon-Lang et al (2007) hypothesized the earliest occurrence of amniote footprints based on tracks compared in the same work to Pseudobradypus (Fig.…”