Nasrollah Abbassi‡, Masoumeh Khoshyar§, Spencer G. Lucas|, Farid Esmaeili¶© Nasrollah Abbassi, Masoumeh Khoshyar, Spencer G. Lucas, Farid Esmaeili. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Abbassi N, Khoshyar M, Lucas SG, Esmaeili F (2021) Extensive vertebrate tracksite from the Upper Red Formation (middle–late Miocene), west Zanjan, northwestern Iran. Fossil Record 24(1): 101-116. https://doi.org/10.5194/fr-24-101-2021 |  |
An extensive vertebrate tracksite from the middle–lateMiocene Upper Red Formation in western Zanjan Province, northwestern Iran,provides new records of paleobiogeographical significance. These are recordsof common footprints of felids referred to as Felipeda lynxi Panin and Avram, canidsreferred to as Canipeda longigriffa Panin and Avram and less common bird footprints referred to asIranipeda abeli Lambrecht. The Canipeda record establishes the late Miocene presence of canids onthe Iranian Plateau as part of the Eurasia-wide “Eucyon event”. TheFelipeda footprints are consistent with body fossil and footprint records elsewherein Eurasia that indicate a widespread distribution of felids by late Miocenetime. An unusual trace associated with the footprints is a large, shallowgrazing or locomotion trace similar to Megaplanolites in some features but distinctive invarious features and its occurrence in nonmarine facies, and it will be thesubject of further study.