Synopsis The mould of a track from SE Arran, and several in situ trackways and individual tracks, as well as a partial trackway on a loose block of Triassic sandstone, from western Arran, represent the first verifiable fossil tracks of Chirotherium from the Triassic of Scotland and support a Scythian (Lower Triassic) age for the base of the Auchenhew Beds. The grouping of the I-IV toes with toe V behind and lateral to the group is characteristic of Chirotherium-like tracks. A comparison with European and American Triassic trackways suggests that the tracks belong to the species Chirotherium barthii Kaup, 1835, first described from Hildburghausen, Germany.

SynopsisSeveral in situ trackways and individual chirotheriid footprints have been found at a number of locations along the southern coast of the Isle of Arran. A locality on the coast near Sliddery has five trackways with three of over 17 footprints and one locality west of Kildonan also has a trackway with over 10 footprints. They are all from the Triassic Auchenhew Beds, but may belong to several levels within these beds. The state of preservation of the footprints is variable, but a combination of morphological characters and landmark polygons suggests that they belong to Isochirotherium herculis (Egerton) 1838. Previously described footprints from Arran, originally described as Chirotherium barthii (Clark et al. 2002), are reidentified as I. herculis. IntroductionChirotheriid trackways and footprints from the Triassic of Scotland are rare. Only three localities have been previously identified in the literature. In 1850, Harkness (1850a, b) reported on the existence of Chirotherium from near Annan, Dumfriesshire, however, there was neither a detailed description, nor illustration of these footprints that are now lost. These footprints cannot, therefore, be substantiated, but it is hoped that further examples will eventually be discovered in this area. Other footprints found in the Annan area were identified as Delairichnus by Haubold (1971a) and are not considered to be chirotheriid. The only substantiated claim of the existence of chirotheriid footprints in Scotland was published by Clark et al. (2002) on footprints from two localities on the Isle of Arran. The first footprint was found at Levencorroch Hill and is now in the collections of the Oxford University Museum (OUM G.53) and identified by M. King in 1992 as the left pes of Chirotherium. It was initially tentatively identified as dinosaurian (McKerrow and Atkins 1985). The second was on the coast 2.5km northwest of Blackwaterfoot on the southwest coast of Arran near to Cleiteadh nan Sgarbh (NR 886 301) (Clark et al. 2002).