CYNODONTIPUS: A PROCOLOPHONID BURROW – NOT A HAIRY CYNODONT TRACK (MIDDLE-LATE TRIASSIC: EUROPE, MOROCCO, EASTERN NORTH AMERICA)

Cynodontipus is a Middle to Late Triassic, continental trace fossil originally described by Ellenberger in 1976 as the footprint of a hirsute cynodont synapsid. In addition to its type locality in the Middle Triassic of France, Cynodontipus has been identified from the Middle Triassic of Germany, the Middle and Late Triassic of Morocco, the Late Triassic of Nova Scotia, Canada, and the Late Triassic of Connecticut, USA. This last occurrence consists of unlabeled part and counterpart slabs discovered in the Hitchcock collection at the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College. These specimens show that Cynodontipus is a vertebrate burrow that terminates at a recalcitrant subsurface bedding interface and is not a footprint. Because the impenetrable interface was often a clay bed that was subareally exposed prior to burial by what subsequently became the burrow substrate, there are often true footprints on the same surface intersected by Cynodontipus. The simplest hypothesis of the trace maker of Cynodontipus is that it was a produced by burrowing procolophonids, which are know from the same deposits, are the right size, and are known to have burrowed.