National Research Projects - GEO01
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Marco ROMANO
TITLE: Discovering the first tetrapod footprints from the Early Triassic of Antarctica: a multidisciplinary approach
FUNDING AGENCY: MIUR, Programma Nazionale di Ricerca in Antartide - PNRA D.D. 1314 del 25/05/2018 PNRA18_00167
START DATE: 2021
END DATE: 2022
ABSTRACT:
Vertebrate footprints represent a unique ‘living image’ of the organisms that left them, with opportunities to make inferences about behavior and many other aspects of physiology and general biology of putative trackmakers, not obtainable simply from body fossils. Very recently, the sensational discovery of the first Early Triassic tetrapod footprints from Antarctica was made by the multidisciplinary team headed by Prof. Christian Sidor, in the framework of the Antarctica project “Understanding the evolution of high-latitude Permo-Triassic paleoenvironments and their vertebrate communities”. Several horizons with numerous footprints were identified and collected from Halfmoon Bluff, Collinson Ridge, and McIntyre Promontory, in the field work conducted in December 2017–January 2018. All collected material come from the lower Fremouw Formation in the Shackleton Glacier region. The project proposed herein represents a multi-disciplinary research endeavor on the unique ichnological material from Antarctica, integrating numerous branches of paleontology and evolutionary biology (ichnology, anatomy, functional morphology, morphometry, biomechanics), and using new cutting edge technology, as 3D photogrammetric acquisition and digital modelling. The new research complements the broader project headed by Christian Sidor. Once interpreted, the fossil footprints will represent a crucial biochronological tool to better define the relative age of deposits, and to perform large-scale biostratigraphic correlations and paleobiogeographical reconstructions. The project will include an in-depth comparison of the new Early Triassic footprints from Antarctica with their lower latitude equivalents. The recognition, through a multi-disciplinary approach, of different types of zoological trackmakers will throw new light on the tetrapod diversity in the Early Triassic of Antarctica, increasing our understanding of the highest paleolatitude tetrapod fauna.