First record of tetrapod footprints from the Carboniferous Mesters Vig Formation in East Greenland.

Abstract

A single slab with Late Palaeozoic tetrapod footprints from East Greenland has been housed at the Natural History Museum of Denmark for decades without scientific notice. The specimen comes from the Mesters Vig Formation of northern Scoresby Land in East Greenland and contains a monospecific assemblage of tetrapod footprints that we assign to Limnopus Marsh 1894. As there is no significant morphological difference from other records of this ichnogenus from North America, Europe and North Africa, the described tetrapod footprints can be referred to eryopoid temnospondyl trackmakers. Limnopus is well-known from Upper Carboniferous and Lower Permian continental deposits of palaeoequatorial Pangea. Identification of Limnopus tracks is in agreement with the supposed Late Carboniferous age of the Mesters Vig Formation and thereby also the first evidence of Carboniferous tetrapods from Greenland.