Pleistocene bog iron track

[MarcoSr]

I have been collecting Pleistocene bog iron tracks for several years helping a USGS emeritus with his study of them.  The attached picture shows a piece of bog iron with a Pleistocene mammal track that I recently collected.  There are five distinct pads in the track.  One pad on the left side of the print is difficult to see in the picture because it is not discolored like the other four.  Two nail/claw prints can also be clearly seen.  From looking at my Peterson Field Guide on animal tracks, I believe that the track could be from a fox, like a gray fox, based upon track size and features.  Edit:  The track turned out to be a Canipeda gracilis footprint, made by a juvenile coyote .   Marco Sr.

Edited November 3, 2018 by MarcoSr
Print determined to be a juvenile coyote

[FossilDudeCO]

That is very cool!

Thanks for sharing!!

[DE&i]

Very impressive

[ynot]

Neat thing to find. Thanks for sharing.

Tony

[sixgill pete]

Very Cool Marco!!

[MarcoSr]

9 hours ago, FossilDudeCO said:

That is very cool!

Thanks for sharing!!

 

7 hours ago, DarrenElliot said:

Very impressive

 

6 hours ago, ynot said:

Neat thing to find. Thanks for sharing.

Tony

 

5 hours ago, sixgill pete said:

Very Cool Marco!!

 

Thank you.  The bog iron tracks are a different type of fossil from what I usually collect.  I also find them cool because tracks in bog iron are usually pretty rare.  We have found around 20 species of mammal and bird tracks including tracks from some mammals that are extinct like ground sloths.

 

Marco Sr.

[FossilDudeCO]

1 minute ago, MarcoSr said:

 

 

 

 

Thank you.  The bog iron tracks are a different type of fossil from what I usually collect.  I also find them cool because tracks in bog iron are usually pretty rare.  We have found around 20 species of mammal and bird tracks including tracks from some mammals that are extinct like ground sloths.

 

Marco Sr.

 

OMG....I have to see the ground sloth tracks if you can snap pictures....

 

Ill hold my breath for that!

[MarcoSr]

17 minutes ago, FossilDudeCO said:

 

OMG....I have to see the ground sloth tracks if you can snap pictures....

 

Ill hold my breath for that!

 

I give all of the bog iron tracks that I collect to a USGS emeritus who is going to write a paper describing them.  The sloth track has already been donated to a small local museum in Virginia which has future plans to display the bog iron tracks for the public. The tracks need museum numbers for him to describe them in his paper.  I only have this track because I didn't collect it with the emeritus and haven't had a chance to give it to him yet.  I'll let you know when he publishes his paper but don't hold your breath on that.

 

Marco Sr.

[RCW3D]

As I said on FB, this is by far the coolest thing I have seen.

I've actually been to a tracking school and spent a lot of "dirt time" looking at fox tracks...which is one of the reasons why I find this so cool. I definitely agree that it is canine in origin and I can see why you went with a species like a kit fox as a possible ID. The difficulty in making a firm ID is the substrate that the track was on. Soft sediment tends to cause the paws to spread out making them appear larger. The interesting thing to me is how round the track appears, that's more indicative of felines than canines, if it wasn't for the very prominent claw prints, I would have said it was feline in origin. I've seen feline tracks with claws present but they registered very lightly, claws that registered as deep as these are canine.

 

Thanks so much for sharing this! 

[ynot]

@MarcoSr,

Can You explain how these are formed? My knowledge of bogs says that they are a swampy type environment and not conducive to preserving prints.

 

Thanks,

Tony

[MarcoSr]

2 hours ago, ynot said:

@MarcoSr,

Can You explain how these are formed? My knowledge of bogs says that they are a swampy type environment and not conducive to preserving prints.

 

Thanks,

Tony

 

Tony

 

From Wikipedia:

“Bog iron is a form of impure iron deposit that develops in bogs or swamps by the chemical or biochemical oxidation of iron carried in solution. In general, bog ores consist primarily of iron oxyhydroxides, commonly goethite (FeO(OH)).

 

Iron-bearing groundwater typically emerges as a spring. The iron is oxidized to ferric hydroxide upon encountering the oxidizing environment of the surface. Bog ore often combines goethite, magnetite and vugs or stained quartz. Oxidation may occur through enzyme catalysis by iron bacteria. It is not clear whether the magnetite precipitates upon first contact with oxygen, then oxidizes to ferric compounds, or whether the ferric compounds are reduced when exposed to anoxic conditions upon burial beneath the sediment surface and reoxidized upon exhumation at the surface.”

 

Hope this helps.  I see a lot of this Pleistocene bog iron in Virginia.  Tracks are extremely rare or nonexistent in most of the bog iron with the exception of one localized area.

 

Marco Sr.

[MarcoSr]

2 hours ago, RCW3D said:

As I said on FB, this is by far the coolest thing I have seen.

I've actually been to a tracking school and spent a lot of "dirt time" looking at fox tracks...which is one of the reasons why I find this so cool. I definitely agree that it is canine in origin and I can see why you went with a species like a kit fox as a possible ID. The difficulty in making a firm ID is the substrate that the track was on. Soft sediment tends to cause the paws to spread out making them appear larger. The interesting thing to me is how round the track appears, that's more indicative of felines than canines, if it wasn't for the very prominent claw prints, I would have said it was feline in origin. I've seen feline tracks with claws present but they registered very lightly, claws that registered as deep as these are canine.

 

Thanks so much for sharing this! 

 

Rob

 

I agree that the two claw prints are very prominent and deep and indicate a canine versus a feline.  We did find a set of tracks on one bog iron piece that look like a combination of a mother and very young bobcat.  That was really cool.

 

I think the dark discoloration may be making the pad impressions appear rounder than they actually are.  It is hard to see the actual impressions of the pads in the picture.  You can see the shape of the left pad without the discoloration if you look really closely at the picture.  The impression of the top pad is actually a little larger and not as rounded as the dark discoloration.

 

It is very interesting that you went to tracking school.  I see a lot of different tracks on my property where I live in Virginia in sand, mud and snow.  However even with the different track guides that I have, I'm still not the greatest with some of the ids.  The bog iron tracks also could be from a species that is currently extinct which complicates the identification process.  Also a lot of the tracks are fragmentary which makes an id much harder.  I'll look at hundreds of pieces of bog iron in the field and usually take out less than 10 pieces with potential tracks.  The USGS emeritus can quickly separate the tracks from the non tracks.  I still can't do that accurately.

 

Marco Sr.

[Plax]

I didn't know that such things existed Marco. Thanks for the enlightenment. I have seen slabby bog iron as old as the Cretaceous Magothy formation and never thought of it bearing tracks. There is quite a bit of it near the deep cut at C&D canal. Not sure of the age there.

  Learn something new every day!

[MarcoSr]

3 minutes ago, Plax said:

I didn't know that such things existed Marco. Thanks for the enlightenment. I have seen slabby bog iron as old as the Cretaceous Magothy formation and never thought of it bearing tracks. There is quite a bit of it near the deep cut at C&D canal. Not sure of the age there.

  Learn something new every day!

 

Truthfully if the USGS emeritus hadn't shown a bog iron track to me several years back I wouldn't know about them either.  It also took me a while to recognize the tracks after I started to look for them.  There are other neat trace fossils also in the bog iron like bluegill nests and crab burrows.  Petrified wood pieces also are found in the bog iron.  The petrified wood is a lot easier to spot than the tracks and other trace fossils.  It takes just the right conditions for these fossils to form.  But it is possible that any bog iron might contain them.

 

Marco Sr.

[ynot]

Thanks for the info Sir!

This brings to mind the vision of animals tip-toeing across a bog on these strange stepping stones.

 

Tony

[MarcoSr]

2 minutes ago, ynot said:

Thanks for the info Sir!

This brings to mind the vision of animals tip-toeing across a bog on these strange stepping stones.

 

Tony

 

Tony

 

I can almost visualize that also.  The tracks add a dimension that you don't see from just bones and teeth alone.

 

Marco Sr.

[Plax]

36 minutes ago, MarcoSr said:

 

Truthfully if the USGS emeritus hadn't shown a bog iron track to me several years back I wouldn't know about them either.  It also took me a while to recognize the tracks after I started to look for them.  There are other neat trace fossils also in the bog iron like bluegill nests and crab burrows.  Petrified wood pieces also are found in the bog iron.  The petrified wood is a lot easier to spot than the tracks and other trace fossils.  It takes just the right conditions for these fossils to form.  But it is possible that any bog iron might contain them.

 

Marco Sr.

I have or had some Magothy bog iron with wood in it. this stuff is actually sandy overbank deposits or some such isn't it?

[MarcoSr]

3 hours ago, Plax said:

I have or had some Magothy bog iron with wood in it. this stuff is actually sandy overbank deposits or some such isn't it?

 

The bog iron that we find the Pleistocene tracks in was deposited by the chemical or biochemical oxidation of iron from iron-bearing groundwater which typically emerged as a spring in a marshy or swampy area.

 

Marco Sr.

[Plax]

Agreed. The induration is caused by the method you state. I was referring to the origins of the sand itself.  When I've seen it in-situ it has finer sediment above and below so I'm picturing a bog/swamp/slow moving stream with a sand deposit on it from higher than normal stream activity. The sand would be more porous than the clay or mud and the iron infested groundwater would accumulate there because of its porosity. Although now that I think of it; the material in the New Jersey pine barrens seems to run all over the countryside. In that scenario it might be biogenic iron precipitating near the top of the water table in relatively uniform but slightly coarser sediment. Interesting topic. thanks for enlightening us once again!

[MarcoSr]

1 hour ago, Plax said:

Agreed. The induration is caused by the method you state. I was referring to the origins of the sand itself.  When I've seen it in-situ it has finer sediment above and below so I'm picturing a bog/swamp/slow moving stream with a sand deposit on it from higher than normal stream activity. The sand would be more porous than the clay or mud and the iron infested groundwater would accumulate there because of its porosity. Although now that I think of it; the material in the New Jersey pine barrens seems to run all over the countryside. In that scenario it might be biogenic iron precipitating near the top of the water table in relatively uniform but slightly coarser sediment. Interesting topic. thanks for enlightening us once again!

 

Your description of " a bog/swamp/slow moving stream with a sand deposit on it from higher than normal stream activity." is IMHO a very accurate description of the environment where the bog iron with these tracks formed.

 

Marco Sr.

[jcbshark]

Very interesting Macro I've never seen anything like that before

[MarcoSr]

9 hours ago, jcbshark said:

Very interesting Macro I've never seen anything like that before

 

Jeff

 

I've found some really cool tracks.  Definitely something different from what I'm normally looking for.

 

Marco Sr.

[MarcoSr]

As an update to this post, a paper has been written by Dr. Robert Weems on the bog iron, Pleistocene tracks from Virginia that we have been collecting for the last 3 years or so.  The paper is currently in review and hopefully will be published by the end of the year.  The track in this post is canid but after detailed examination turned out not to be a gray fox.

 

Marco Sr.

[Xiphactinus]

Interesting. This is a new one for me. Learn something on TFF all the time.

[Fossildude19]

Cool!

Looks like it will be an interesting read!

Regards,