First known fossil bird tracks (Pleistocene) on San Salvador island, Bahamas
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/GeologicaActa2015.13.1.4Keywords:
Bahamas, Birds, Ichnology, Pleistocene, Trace fossilsAbstract
Two avian footprints discovered in the Grotto Beach Formation (Pleistocene) of San Salvador Island (Bahamas) are the first known vertebrate trace fossils on this well-studied island. The trace fossils, preserved as beddingplane impressions in an oolitic-bioclastic grainstone, match the size and form of tracks made by modern gulls. The tracks are in beach facies located below a paleosol dated from Marine Isotope Substage 5e (~120,000kya). These tracks add to a record of Pleistocene bird tracks reported from Eleuthera Island and bode well for the recognition of more vertebrate trace fossils on San Salvador and other Bahamian islands.
References
Blick, J.P., Brinson, D., 2007. Vertebrate faunal remains from the Minnis-Ward site (SS-3), San Salvador, Bahamas: PreColumbian fishing and subsistence techniques. In: Hays, W.K., Rathcke, B.J., (eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Symposium on the Natural History of the Bahamas. San Salvador, Bahamas, Gerace Research Centre, 143-157.
Carew, J.L., Mylroie, J.E., 1995. A stratigraphic and depositional model for the Bahama Islands. In: Curran, H.A., White, B.
(eds.). Geological Society of America Special Paper 300, Terrestrial and Shallow Marine Geology of the Bahamas and Bermuda, 5-31.
Curran, H.A., 1984. Ichnology of Pleisteocene carbonates on San Salvador, Bahamas. Journal of Paleontology, 58, 312-321.
Curran, H.A., 2007. Ichnofacies, ichnocoenoses, and ichnofabrics of Quaternary shallow-marine to dunal tropical carbonates: a model and inmplications. In: Miller, W.M., III (ed.). Trace Fossils: Concepts, Problems, Prospects. Amsterdam,
Netherlands, Elsevier, 232-247.
Curran, H.A., Martin, A.J., 2003. Intertidal mounds of tropical callianasside provide substrates for complex upogebia shrimp burrows: modern and Pleistocene examples from the Bahamas. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 192, 229-245.
Doyle, P., Wood, J.L., George, G.T., 2000. The shorebird ichnofacies: an example from the Miocene of southern Spain. Geological Magazine, 137, 517-536.
Elbroch, M., Marks, E., 2001. Bird Tracks and Sign of North America. Stackpole Books. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 456pp.
Hallett, B., 2006. Bird of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Oxford, United Kingdom. MacMillan Caribbean, 245pp.
Kindler, P., Curran, H.A., Marty, D., Samankassou, E., 2008. Multiple sedimentary sequences, bird tracks and lagoon beaches in last interglacial oolites, Boiling Hole, North Eleuthera Island, Bahamas. In: Freile, D., Park, L.E. (eds.). 13th Symposium of the Geology of the Bahamas and Other Carbonate Regions. San Salvador, Bahamas, Gerace Research Centre, 169-181.
Martin, A.J., 2006. Trace Fossils of San Salvador. San Salvador, Bahamas, Gerace Research Centre, 80pp.
Martin, A.J., 2013. Life Traces of the Georgia Coast: Revealing the Unseen Lives of Plants and Animals. Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Press, 692pp.
Olson, S.L., Pregill, G.K., Hilgartner, W.B., 1990. Studies on fossil and extant vertebrates from San Salvador (Watling’s) Island, Bahamas. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology, 508, 15pp.
Rothus, T.A., 2008. Geology at the Gerace Research Centre, San Salvador, Bahamas. Geological Society of America Abstracts
with Programs, 40(6), 415.
Shaklee, R.V., 2009. In Columbus’ Footsteps: Geography of San Salvador Island, Bahamas (2nd Edition). San Salvador Island,
Bahamas, Gerace Research Centre, 100pp.
Steadman, D.W., Franz, R., Morgan, G.S., Albury, N.A., Kakuk, B., Broad, K., Franz, S.E., Tinker, K. Pateman, M.P., Lott, T.A., Jarzen, D.M., Dilcher, D.L., 2007. Exceptionally well preserved late Quaternary plant and vertebrate fossils from a blue hole on Abaco, the Bahamas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 19897-199902.
Walker, S.E., Holland, S.M., Gardiner, L., 2003. Coenobichnus new ichnogenus, a walking trace from a land hermit crab, early Holocene, San Salvador Island, Bahamas. Journal of Paleontology, 77, 576-582.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright
Geologica Acta is the property of the UB, GEO3BCN, IDAEA and UAB. Geologica Acta must be cited for any partial or full reproduction. Papers are distributed under the Attribution-Share Alike Creative Commons License. This license allows anyone to reproduce and disseminate the content of the journal and even make derivative works crediting authorship and provenance and distributing possible derivative works under the same or an equivalent license.
Author Rights
Authors retain the copyright on their papers and are authorized to post them on their own web pages or institutional repositories. The copyright was retained by the journal from the year 2003 until 2009. In all cases, the complete citation and a link to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article must be included.
The authors can use excerpts or reproduce illustrations of their papers in other works without prior permission from Geologica Acta provided the source of the paper including the complete citation is fully acknowledged.
