Pleistocene small-mammal and arthropod trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa

Abstract

AbstractA trackway and burrows of a small rodent-sized bounding mammal (attributed to the Cape gerbil,Gerbilliscus afra) and a traceway of a large arachnid (spider) from the Pleistocene Waenhuiskrans Formation represent two biological groups not previously reported from this track-rich dune facies, which is widely distributed along the Cape south coast of South Africa. This may be due to biases against the preservation of small tracks. Trackways of hopping or bounding rodent-sized mammals are rare in the fossil record, occurring at only two known Mesozoic sites and three Cenozoic sites. Where these occur in dune facies, they are commonly associated with arachnid and other arthropod surface trails. The arachnid trace fossils commonly include the spider tracewayOctopodichnus, known from the Permian to Recent, which is also the temporal range of the eponymousOctopodichnusichnofacies. The abundance of small-mammal tracks associated with dune ichnofaunas led to the naming of the late Palaeozoic and MesozoicChelichnusichnofacies, which is largely co-extensive with theOctopodichnusichnofacies at this time. However, the recognition of similar mammal–arthropod dune facies assemblages in the Cenozoic requires adjusting our understanding of their distribution in space and time, and extends the known distribution of dune ichnofacies.