Walking in mud: Remarkable Pleistocene human trackways from White Sands National Park (New Mexico)

Human tracks at White Sands National Park record more than one and a half kilometres of an out‐ and‐back journey and form the longest Late Pleistocene‐age double human trackway in the world. An adolescent or small adult female made two trips separated by at least several hours, carrying a young child in at least one direction. Despite giant ground sloth and Columbian Mammoth transecting them between the outbound and return journeys, the human tracks show no changes indicative of predator/prey awareness. In contrast, the giant ground sloth tracks show behaviour consistent with human predator awareness, while mammoth tracks show no such apparent concern. The human footprints are morphologically variable and exhibit left‐right asymmetry, which might be due to child carrying. We explore this morphological variability using methods based on the analysis of objective track outlines, which add to the analytical toolkit available for use at other human footprint sites. The sheer number of tracks and their remarkable morphological variability have implications for the reliability of inferences made using much smaller samples as are more common at typical footprint sites. One conclusion is that the number of footprints required to make reliable biometric inferences is larger than often assumed

Postcranial osteology of the first early-stage juvenile skeleton of Plateosaurus trossingensis from the Norian of Frick, Switzerland

Owing to monospecific mass-accumulation sites in Central Europe, the early-branching sauropodomorph Plateosaurus has one of the best fossil records among dinosaurs. Despite this, early-stage juveniles have been conspicuously absent. However, such specimens are critical in assessing the ontogenetic development of this taxon, as well as the role of heterochrony in sauropodomorph evolution. A new skeleton from the Plateosaurus bonebed at the Gruhalde Quarry (Klettgau Formation, Norian) of Frick, Switzerland, nicknamed “Fabian”, represents the first substantially complete juvenile referrable to Plateosaurus. The specimen includes large portions of the cranium and vertebral column and an almost completely represented appendicular skeleton. Its juvenile ontogenetic stage is confirmed by a lack of neurocentral suture fusion in the axial skeleton. Consistent with this, the estimated total length and body mass of approximately of 2.3 m and 40 kg are considerably smaller than any previously reported specimen of the genus. Surprisingly, the postcranial morphology of the specimen is remarkably consistent with that of osteologically mature individuals, including a virtually fully developed pattern of laminae and fossae in the vertebrae. Comparisons of body proportions are complicated by varying degrees of compaction in the limb elements, but skeletal proportions mostly appear to follow isometry, with the notable exceptions of a relatively long neck, proportionately larger manus, shorter, more gracile humerus and shorter forearm in the juvenile specimen. The observed morphology suggests that adult morphology was either achieved early in ontogeny of Plateosaurus, or alternatively that developmental plasticity, which has previously been found to result in high variability of adult body size, could potentially also extend to morphological development

New skulls of the basal sauropodomorph Plateosaurus trossingensis from Frick, Switzerland: Is there more than one species?

The Triassic basal sauropodomorph Plateosaurus trossingensis is well-known from mass accumulations at the German localities of Trossingen and Halberstadt and the Swiss locality of Frick, and is significant especially regarding its taphonomy and proposed developmental plasticity. These implications, however, rely on the assumption that this material derives from a single species, which has been questioned. Here we describe new skull material from Frick including eight complete and six partial skulls, more than doubling the number of known skulls of P. trossingensis. This exceptional sample size allows for gaining a deeper understanding of variability that may occur in a single species. The new material includes the first known juvenile skulls of Plateosaurus, allowing for detecting ontogenetic changes. An attempt is made to distinguish between variability caused by taphonomic plastic deformation and intraspecific variability. Plastic deformation may shorten, but not widen bones. A number of characters commonly included in phylogenetic analyses of basal sauropodomorphs are shown to be variable within P. trossingensis, and possibly require re-evaluation. Although P. trossingensis skulls are highly variable, many of the variable characters include intermediate character states and therefore are continuous. No groupings based on skull features, locality, or stratigraphy are apparent. Consequently, the analyzed skull material from the bonebeds of Frick, Trossingen, and Halberstadt bears no evidence for the presence of more than one species