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Footprints on the Sands of Time: Dumfriesshire

In about the year 1830, much interest was excited by the discovery of footmarks, resembling those of land tortoises, on the exposed surfaces of slabs of sandstone of Triassic age, in a quarry at Corncockle Muir in Dumfriesshire, of which an interesting account was published by the Rev. Dr. Duncan. Regular tracks, indicating the slow progression of a small four-footed animal over the surface while the stone was in the state of moist sand, were traced on the blocks of sandstone, when separated by the quarrymen, along the lines of their stratification. In one instance there were found twenty-four consecutive impressions, forming a track with six distinct repetitions of the marks of each foot, the front feet differing from the hind feet. The appearance of five claws was discernible on the impressions of each fore paw. In 1853, Sir William Jardine published a splendid folio work in which he fully described these footprints; it was illustrated by full-sized lithographs coloured after Nature.¹ The footprints occur in the Dumfriesshire Sandstones, in different patches, in several localities, but are best seen either where naturally exposed in the valleys of the Esk, the Nith, and the Annan, or in the quarries in those districts where they are worked for building material. One of those areas, of considerable extent, fills up the bottom of nearly all the upper basin of the Annan Valley above the ridge at Dormont Rocks. The beds are about two hundred feet thick, and present even surfaces. It is a curious fact, observed by the author of the above-mentioned book, that all the footprints are impressed as if the animal had walked from west to east. As a rule the creature seems to have walked in a straight line, but sometimes the tracks turn and wind in different directions. The paces are generally even and uninterrupted, seldom diverging much aside, showing little stoppage for food, or for a scuffle with a neighbour, which sometimes 1 Ichnology of Annandale (Edinburgh, 1853; folio). accompanied them. They appear more as the tracks of animals passing at once across some tide-receded estuary, in pursuit of some well-known and favourite grounds which were periodically sought after for some particular purpose. But it must be borne in mind that the impressions figured in this important work are not all similar in shape, and were probably due to different animals, They often show the effects of a peculiar pushing-back motion, which may be noticed in living tortoises. Dean Buckland, who was interested in these impressions, caused a living tortoise to walk on soft sand, clay, and paste, and found a fairly close correspondence between the tracks thus made and those of Corncockle Muir.

In 1831, Mr. Poulett-Scrope, an English geologist, described some small tracks made by a crustacean on a rock of the Jurassic period, known as the Forest Marble.