Early Permian fossil vertebrate footprints and their stratigraphic setting in megacyclic sequence II red beds, Prim Point, Prince Edward Island

Abstract

Vertebrate trace fossils are reported for the first time from red beds near the top of megacyclic sequence II at Prim Point in southwestern Prince Edward Island. They occur as casts of tetrapod trackways. The ichnocoenose also includes a rich invertebrate ichnofauna. The trackmakers thrived in an area of sparse vegetation and occupied out-of-channel river sediments, most likely crevasse-splay deposits.Amphisauropus latus, represented by three trackways, has been previously reported from Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. It is here interpreted as the track of a cotylosaur. It occurs together with the track of Gilmoreichnus kablikae, which is either a captorhinomorph or possibly a juvenile pelycosaur. These facilitate the assignment of a late Early Permian (late Autunian) age to the strata. The third set of footprints, those of a small herbivorous pelycosaur, compare most closely with Ichniotherium willsi, known hitherto from the Keele beds (latest Stephanian) of the English Midlands.This ichnocoenose occurs in a plate-tectonically rafted segment of crust stratigraphically equivalent to the same association of ichnofauna in the English Midlands and central Europe. The community occupied piedmont-valley-flat red beds within the molasse facies of Variscan uplands.

Lithostratigraphy of the Prince Edward Island redbeds

“…This early Permian age is further supported by the presence of vertebrate fossils obtained from a number of locali ties around Hillsborough Bay (Langston, 1963) and by a recent find at Prim Point of tetrapod trackways in upper Kildare Capes strata interpreted to represent Amplisauropus latus Gilmoreichnus kablikae and possibly Ichniotherium willsi indicating a similar early Permian age (Mossman and Place, 1989). On tenuous evidence Langston (1963, p. 29) suggested that verte brate fossiliferous beds exposed further west at Seacow Head are the same age as those around Hillsborough Bay.…”

On the discovery of tetrapod trackways from Permo-Carboniferous redbeds of Prince Edward Island and their biostratigraphic significance

“…In marked contrast, none had been described from the neighbouring province of Prince Edward Island nor from the Permian of the Maritimes Basin previous to the discovery in 1984 of the footprints reported here. Since the discovery of trackways described here, a subsequent discovery from Prince Edward Island was published by Mossman and Place (1989). The small but prolifi c trackway-bearing slab here described was discovered at Beech Point, Malpeque Bay by EBU in August of 1984.…”

“…156.) A more diminutive ichnospecies, Gilmoreichnus kablikae Haubold, 1974 has been described by Mossman and Place (1989) from Prim Point, Prince Edward Island (Fig. 7) in redbeds mapped as the Kildares Cape Formation (Mossman and Place 1989).…”

“…We also note the possible alternative identifi cation of footprints assigned by Mossman and Place to Ichniotherium cf. I. willsi Haubold and Sarjeant, 1973 as an ichnospecies of Gilmoreichnus (H. Haubold, referenced in Mossman and Place (1989)). …”

Eochelysipus horni, a new vertebrate trace fossil from the Tournaisian Horton Bluff Formation, Nova Scotia

“…Recent phylogenetic analysis (Hancox and Rubidge 2000) focussed on this enigmatic reptile, identifies Eunotosaurus as procolophonid sister group (together with pareiasaurs) of parareptiles, and further as ancestral to anapsids (Reisz and Laurin 1991;Gow and Rubidge 1997). Early Permian procolophons are also well represented in the Maritimes (Mossman and Place 1989;Calder et al 1995;van Allen et al 2005) although nothing recognizable as strictly turtle-like.…”