| Administrative History | The slab was presented to the Museum of the Geological Society.
"These impressions were discovered by Miss Potts of Chester, on a flagstone near the shaft of a coal-pit at Mostyn in Flintshire, and were communicated by her to Dr. Buckland, with a remark on the novelty of footsteps in any stratum older than the new red sandstone. As they present no trace of any true foot to which long claws may have been attached, Dr. Buckland rejects the notion of their having been made by a reptile. They consist of curvilinear scratches disposed symmetrically at regular intervals on each side of a level space, about two inches wide, which in his opinion may represent the body of a fish, to the pectoral rays of which animal he attributes the scratches. They follow one another in nearly equidistant rows of three scratches in a row, and at intervals of about two inches from the point of each individual scratch to the points of those next succeeding and preceding it. They are all slightly convex outwards, three on each side of the median space, or supposed place of the body of the fish. Each external scratch is about one inch and a half in length; the inner ones are about half an inch, and the middle one about an inch long. These proportions are pretty constant
through a series of eight successive rows of triple impressions on the slab from the Mostyn coal-pit. The impressions of the right and left fin-ray are not quite symmetrically opposed to each other on a straight line of progression; but the path of the animal appears to have been curvilinear, trending towards the right: each impression or scratch is deepest on its supposed frontal side, and becomes more shallow gradually backwards. All these conditions seem to agree with the hypothesis of their having been made by three bony processes projecting from the anterior rays of the pectoral fin of a fish. They are not consistent with conditions that would have accompanied the impressions of claws proceeding from the feet of any reptile.
Dr. Buckland refers to the structure of existing Siluroid and Lophoid fishes, and of the climbing perch (Anabas scandens), and Hassar (Doras cosiaia), as bearing him out in the conclusions he has come to regarding those markings. He also refers to the observations of Prof. Deslonchamps [sic], on the ambulatory movements under water of the common Gurnard, as confirmatory of his views. He has been informed of a slab of coal sandstone bearing similar markings in the museum of Sheffield; and remarks, that there are several fossil fishes of the carboniferous system approximating the characters of Gurnards, and capable of making such markings as those described." [Buckland, W, "On Ichthyopatolites, or petrified trackwings of ambulatory fishes upon sandstone of the Coal formation” Proceedings of the Geological Society, vol 4 (1843), p204] |