Palaeoecology and palaeoenvironments of tetrapod footprints from the rotliegend (lower permian) of central Europe

Abstract

In late Palaezoic red beds tetrapod footprints are, both in vertical and lateral extent, the most common fossils. They are at present most fully known from the European Rotliegend. An analysis of their occurrence in relation to lithology, sedimentology and fossil associations (including an interpretation of the prints themselves) shows them to be linked with fluviatile facies in the broadest sense. Of all thssils from the Rotliegend, footprints are the least affected by climatic circumtances or by palaeogeography. Nevertheless, as a consequence of palaeogeographic controls, two footprint communities may be distinguished; a cotylosaur-pelycosaur-temnospondyl community in restricted basins and a pelycosaur-cotylosaur community in broader depositional environments within the Variscan uplands - the molasse facies, piedmont valley-flat red beds. Representatives of the pelycosaur-cotylosaur community colonized wider areas until the latest Saxonian. Their facies relationship with the principal types ofred-bed sediments and the phylogenetic faunal changes they exhibit predestine the vertebrate footprints to serve as guide fossils for the Rotliegend. They afford the means for a precise stratigraphical definition of the Autunian and the Saxonian and for the correlation of the Lower and Upper Autunian of Europe with equivalent occurrences in North America, based on faunas which, as represented by footprints, are generically identical. The wide distribution of shallow fluviatile facies evidently corresponds with particular evolutionary stages in terrestrial amphibians and reptiles. Highland faunas, often exclusively represented by footprints, may be looked upon as starting points for evolutionary radiations of terrestrial vertebrates in the Carboniferous and Permian.