Continental trace fossils and museum exhibits - Geological Curators ...

APPENDIXCHIROTHERIUM FOOTPRINTS IN WARWICKSHIRE:THE PRESTON BAGOT SLAB REDISCOVEREDby Jonathan D. Radley and John E. Pollard 1In 1859, the Rev. P.B. Brodie reported the discoveryof a Triassic (‘Upper Keuper’) sandstone slab in aploughed field at Witley Green, near Preston Bagot,western Warwickshire, preserving two casts of largefootprints that he attributed to ‘Cheirotherium’(Brodie 1859, 1860). This specimen was purchasedby the WNHAS and the locality was corrected to‘Whitley’ in the society’s annual report for 1859(Anon 1860). Today, Whitley House and WhitleyFarm lie roughly halfway between Preston Bagot andHenley-in-Arden. Subsequent reports (e.g., Brodieand Kirshaw 1872) confirmed the presence of thisspecimen within the society’s collection.King et al. (2005) have documented occurrences ofChirotherium prints in the UK, drawing upon thespecimens collected during the nineteenth centurythat are now widespread amongst museum collections.They noted that the only track specimen formallyprovenanced to Preston Bagot in the present-dayWarwickshire Museum collection (WarwickshireMuseum specimen G11543) does not match Brodie’s(1859) description and therefore concluded thatBrodie’s specimen is lost or mislabelled.Tresise and Sarjeant (1997) drew attention to theBeasley Archive of Triassic footprint notes andphotographs, held by the National Museums andGalleries on Merseyside. Henry Beasley, vertebrateichnologist and long-term member of the LiverpoolGeological Society, was familiar with theWarwickshire Museum collection (Beasley 1898,1906) and several photographs of the Triassic trackcollection occur within the archive (Tresise andSarjeant 1997). Photographs 28 and 365 (Figure 5),the former dated 1902 and both attributed to ‘J.Harriott, 15 High Street, Warwick’, exhibit a block ofsandstone showing two footcasts of Chirotheriumtype provenanced in photograph 28 to Preston Bagot(largest of the three specimens at top left).Significantly, this specimen still exists withinWarwickshire Museum’s collection (WarwickshireMuseum specimen G1143; Figure 8). The associatedhand-written label cannot be attributed to a knowncurator or volunteer, but is certainly not the original.It reads ‘Single positive foot impression ofLabyrinthodon in grey sandstone. Upper Keuper,-254-Shrewley, Brodie Collection’. Accordingly, thespecimen was figured in the British GeologicalSurvey’s Redditch sheet memoir published in 1991,amongst a plate of Arden Sandstone (Carnian, LateTriassic) fossils chiefly from Shrewley, severalkilometres northeast of Preston Bagot (Old et al.1991, pl. 11k).The junior author documented G1143 (Figure 8) aspart of a Triassic trace fossil survey during the early1980s. The lithology is medium/coarse-grained whitesandstone with a crudely rippled, loaded and burrowedtop, and a mudcracked and burrowed base. The latterpreserves large, deep manus and pes casts ofChirotherium type (Brachychirotherium isp.; G.Demathieu, personal communication to J.E. Pollard,1983).In his original description of the Preston Bagot find,Brodie (1859) provided dimensions for both the rockmatrix and individual footcasts. These match G1143perfectly. Additionally, Brodie noted the presence ofplough marks upon the surface of the specimen andG1143 accordingly preserves incised linear scratchesconsistent with such damage. We conclude thatG1143, erroneously provenanced to Shrewley, isBrodie’s Preston Bagot slab.Brodie (1859) attributed the specimen to the ‘UpperKeuper’ sandstone, now classified as the ArdenSandstone division of the Mercia Mudstone Groupthat outcrops widely in the Preston Bagot - Henleyin-Ardenarea (British Geological Survey 1989). Thelithology is consistent with those recorded from thelocal Arden Sandstone (Old et al. 1991).1John E. Pollard, School of Earth, Atmospheric andEnvironmental Sciences, The University of Manchester,Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, England