Abstract
Nine terrestrial mammal localities of Miocene age based on body fossils have been reported from the island of Crete to date. A new locality where footprints of terrestrial mammals were exposed has recently been discovered in western Crete. Platýlakkos, the locality, is situated near the village Voúves, west of the city of Chaniá. The ichnofossils come from lacustrine deposits that belong to the Chátzi Formation. The most impressive finding is a clearly defined footprint that might be referred to a large-sized hyaenid. The footprint impression, a convex hyporelief on a sandstone slab, is a natural cast of a left manus where the traces of the interdigital pad and all four digital pads, as well as their respective claw marks- are clearly visible. Based on nearby marine deposits of the Chátzi Formation, the age of the fossiliferous layer with the footprints can be considered to be early to middle Turolian (MN11–MN12) in terms of mammalian biochronology. To date, there is no certain record of Miocene large-sized hyaenid footprints worldwide, and thus this isolated footprint might belong to a new ichnotaxon. However, in the absence of a trackway, the erection of a new ichnotaxon is avoided. The Platýlakkos findings are the first recorded case of fossil land mammal footprints from the Neogene of Crete, and Greece in general. They further the evidence for the presence of well-established terrestrial environments and faunas in the area of Crete during the Late Miocene.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the owner of the olive grove, Mr. Stylianos Perakis, who provided the information about the hyaenid footprint and allowed us to take samples from his property, as well as for his support in this study. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Chania Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and to its Chairman, Evangelos Spanoudakis, for funding the research project “Palaeontological survey of Chania Perfecture” (KA 2412) of the Natural History Museum of Crete of the University of Crete, which covered the fieldwork expenses of this study. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank the reviewers of this paper, Dr. Loïc Costeur (Naturhistorishes Museum Basel, Basel) and Dr. Martin Lockley (University of Colorado, Denver), for their useful comments and suggestions that improved the manuscript.
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This article is a contribution to the special issue “Proceedings of the 9th EAVP Meeting, Heraklion 2011”
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Iliopoulos, G., Roussiakis, S. & Fassoulas, C. First occurrence of carnivore footprint with hyaenid affinities from the Late Miocene of Crete (Greece). Palaeobio Palaeoenv 92, 265–271 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-012-0073-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-012-0073-9