The Late Carboniferous was a crucial interval for the establishment of terrestrial ecosystems. A dramatic change in tetrapod distribution and ecology is coupled with an ongoing transition from amphibian to amniote domination. Presented here is a new set of tetrapod footprints from a single slab discovered on the island of Bjørnøya in the Norwegian High Arctic. A three-dimensional photogrammetric model

Sean Thor Herron,Michael John Flowerdew,Edward James Fleming

doi:10.17850/njg100-2-6

Abstract

The Late Carboniferous was a crucial interval for the establishment of terrestrial ecosystems. A dramatic change in tetrapod distribution and ecology is coupled with an ongoing transition from amphibian to amniote domination. Presented here is a new set of tetrapod footprints from a single slab discovered on the island of Bjørnøya in the Norwegian High Arctic. A three-dimensional photogrammetric model

Highlights

The Late Carboniferous was an important time for the evolution of tetrapods and the environments in which they lived
Presented in this study is the description and ichnotaxonomic analysis of a new set of large tetrapod trackways discovered from a site of Late Carboniferous age on the Norwegian Arctic island of Bjørnøya (Figure 1)
We investigate the possibility that the transition from submerged walking and/or swimming to land-walking is preserved

Summary

Introduction

The Late Carboniferous was an important time for the evolution of tetrapods and the environments in which they lived. Transition from swimming to walking preserved in tetrapod trackways from the Late Carboniferous of Bjørnøya north in the Late Carboniferous, a rainforest collapse and subsequent transition to arid environments at palaeoequatorial to palaeotropical latitudes caused notable changes in tetrapod extinction rates and the distribution of taxa (Sahney et al, 2010; Brocklehurst et al, 2018). This event is referred to as the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse or the Kasimovian revolution (Lucas, 2019). There is currently limited data concerning the locomotive style of tetrapods during this interval, especially tetrapods of this large size

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