A History of Ideas in Ichnology - Trace Fossils as Indicators of Sedimentary Environments - page 5

Trace fossils are also an object of interest for AustralianAborigines. Dinosaur
tracks are part of the Ngarrangkarni (or “Dreamtime”), a mythical past when
giant ancestor beings left traces of their exploits, shaping the landscape to its
present form. Native people attribute theropod tracks to an enormous feathered
“Emu-man”, Marrala (also spelled Marella ; Mayor and Sarjeant, 2001 ).
Marrala's footprints represent ichnohierophanies ( sensu Baucon et al., 2008 ),
which are supposed traces of supernatural entities in objects that are an integral
part of our natural world (i.e., rocks). Ichnohierophanical accounts are reported
from cultures all over the world and include both vertebrate and invertebrate
trace fossils ( Baucon et al., 2008 ).
One of the best examples are the sauropod trackways and the trace fossil
Rhizocorallium of Cape Espichel (Portugal), object of curiosity and devotion
since the thirteenth century. Fishermen from the region of Sesimbra interpreted
such trace fossils as the footprints of a giant mule that carried the Virgin Mary
( Lockley et al., 1994 ). During the eighteenth century, a sanctuary was erected
and “Nossa Senhora da Pedra Mua” (Our Lady of the Mule Stone) became an
object of national worship ( Fig. 1 C).
Ichnohierophanic interpretations were common in the Greco-Roman world,
as exemplified by Lucianus of Samostata (approx. AD 125-after AD 180),
who satirized the frequent claims of “footprints in rock” ( Mayor and Sarjeant,
2001 ). The figure of Heracles often provided a mythological explanation for fos-
sil footprints. For instance, Pseudo-Aristotle reported that “near Pandosia in Iapy-
gia (present-day Heraclea, Italy), the footprints of Heracles are shown and no one
is allowed to step on them”. First attributed to Pleistocene mammal tracks ( Mayor
and Sarjeant, 2001 ), Heracles' footprints are most probably dinosaur footprints,
as evidenced by the abundant dinosaur tracksites in the same area of Pandosia.
Although only aminor part of the texts of natural philosophers survived to us,
neoichnological observations are found in Aristotle's (384-322 BC) History of
Animals and Theophrastus' (approx. 371-287 BC) On Fish ( Sharples, 1995 ).
Trace fossils were apparently ignored by early natural philosophers, with the
exception of Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD). In his Naturalis Historia , the Roman
author described phycites as an “alga-like stone”, possibly some kind of branched
trace fossil. In fact, the term “phycites” or “ficite” was successively used to indi-
cate Chondrites (i.e., Targioni-Tozzetti, 1777 ).
4. THE AGE OF NATURALISTS
Despite these early interpretations, the move toward a rational understanding of
trace fossils began in the European Renaissance. This cultural movement flour-
ished in Italy during the fourteenth century and rapidly spread across Europe,
bringing the start of a revolution in the way to investigate nature.
In Renaissance times, the inquiry into the natural world took place both in
science and art, which were connected by a coherent line of continuity. This
phenomenon can be clearly seen in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, the found-
ing father of ichnology ( Baucon, 2010 ). Indeed Leonardo not only sketched