Abstract:

Fossils represent the preserved remains of life forms that once existed on Earth. These remains are often in the form of rocks which contain impressions of these life forms, casts of their structure, and sometimes simply traces of day-to-day life in the form of footprints, burrows, or tail draggings. Most living things on Earth have not been preserved as fossils because fossilization requires special conditions, such as rapid burial or a situation where the normal processes of decay are inhibited.

When viewed individually, a single fossil may not tell us much about the history of life on Earth, but viewed collectively the fossil record tells a story of the long development of life on Earth, of natural processes that governed the turn of events. Fossils of living things can be traced back to more than 500 million years of Earth history. The fossil record tells of life beginning as simple forms in the sea, eventually moving on to land, and becoming more complex over the vast span of geological time. The record also tells us that during some periods of Earth history, certain life forms dominated the land and sea, such as plants during the Carboniferous period, dinosaurs during the Mesozoic period, and ammonites during the Cretaceous period. The history of our planet is rich in stories of the ups and downs of these past life forms, and present day life has its origins in their successes and failures.

Fossils are very abundant in Alabama. In fact, Alabama is one of the best places in the world to find fossils. Some of the most interesting Alabama fossils are found in the surface coal mines of Walker County. The coal measures of Alabama were laid down during the Carboniferous period, about 310 million years ago, when huge forests of trees covered by beautiful scales towered over ancient swamplands. In these coal measures one can find the scaly impressions of the bark of these ancient trees as well as their root systems, branches, and leaves. One also finds the carbonized remains of beautiful ferns that grew from seeds rather than from spores, and that were attached to plants that achieved the sizes of trees. A host of other types of plants lived among the scaly trees and the seed ferns. Most of these ancient plants are now either extinct or have descendants that are only a shadow of what they used to be.

The Birmingham Paleontological Society (BPS) regularly collects coal age fossils from the surface mines of Walker County. In January, 2000, during one of its regular monthly field trips, the BPS made a major discovery: members found a large number of fossil trackways of ancient amphibians and other animals from the Union Chapel Coal Mine in Walker County. The story behind the discovery is given at the following web-site:

http://bama.ua.edu/rbuta/monograph/

Trackways represent the preserved footprints of animals as they walked or crept along a fine muddy shoreline. Tracks preserve important information on animal sizes, walking speeds, and activities that could not be gathered from studies of bones or other body fossils. Since no body fossils have been found of the ancient animals that left the tracks in Alabama, their trackways are the only real evidence we have of their existence and how they lived.

The most important trackways found at the Union Chapel Mine were made by amphibians, early ancestors of salamanders and frogs. Amphibians are vertebrate animals, and the ones which left the tracks in Walker County were among the earliest vertebrate life ever to walk on land. Vertebrate fossils of any kind are always considered important in paleontology, since they are usually rare and since vertebrate animals are among the most advanced types that developed in their particular time period.

It was quickly realized by the BPS that the Union Chapel mine was an exceptional one in both the quality and number of trackways found. After contacting local professional paleontologists, it was determined that the Union Chapel Mine is the best track site for amphibians for the time period in question. The BPS actively collected trackways from the mine over an 18 month period since the initial visit. Hundreds of specimens were found. Because of the significance of the site, the BPS held three meetings (called ``track meets'') to photographically document the trackways and have them carefully inspected by professional researchers. These meetings were held in August and October 2000 and May 2001. Nearly 1400 photographs of more than 1000 slabs and specimens were taken. We decided that the best way to make this remarkable database of trackway specimens available for general study would be to publish a monograph containing high quality reproductions of the photographs as well as the results of the professional studies of the tracks that have already been made. In June 2001, the groundwork for the monograph was laid down at a meeting at the Alabama Museum of Natural History. It was decided that the monograph would be an amateur/professional collaboration consisting of articles written by BPS members and paleontologists from the Geological Survey of Alabama and Emory University. Supplementing these articles would be an atlas illustrating the best trackways of all types that were found, including some of the plant fossils from the same site. The proposed table of contents for the monograph as well as abstracts of the papers to be included are contained at the above web-site.

We believe that it is very important that the trackway monograph be published. The work will benefit Alabama paleontology in several ways. First, it will bring trackway research back into the forefront of Alabama paleontology. Trackways were first discovered in Alabama in an underground coal mine near Carbon Hill. T. H. Aldrich, a researcher, and W. B. Jones, Alabama's State Geologist at the time, studied the trackways found and published a descriptive paper about them in 1930 through the Alabama Museum of Natural History. Virtually no research on Alabama trackways was done in the intervening 70 years between this study and the discovery of the Union Chapel Mine fossils. It is significant that studies of the Union Chapel Mine fossils have challenged many of the conclusions of Aldrich and Jones. The fruits of the project are already being realized as the results modify and improve our understanding of early animal life in Alabama.

The second benefit of the study is that it will place Alabama trackway research into the prominent domain of international trackway and vertebrate studies. Tracksites of the quality and abundance of the Union Chapel Mine are very rare. Prior to the discovery of the Union Chapel Mine, the earliest high quality track fossils were found at a Permian site in the Robledo Mountains of New Mexico. This site has been dated at 280 million years in age, about 30 million years younger than the UCM tracks. The only other known track site with an age comparable to the UCM tracks is found in Joggins, Nova Scotia. However, the tracks from this site were laid down in different material, and the preservation is considerably poorer than those found at UCM. Other tracksites worldwide tend to be from different and later periods. The UCM tracks clearly represent an important contribution to our understanding of land animal life during the early Pennsylvanian Period. Right now, there is no better known site for this purpose.

The third benefit of the study is that it heralds a cooperation between amateurs and professionals that is rare in paleontology. For Alabama, this has clearly been beneficial because were it not for the efforts of amateur fossil collectors, the UCM site would have gone unnoticed and the valuable track fossils would have disintegrated over time by weathering on the surface.

We seek funds to have the monograph published by a local printing service either in Tuscaloosa or Birmingham. The layout of the monograph will be as follows. There will be four main sections. The first section will include papers on the discovery, significance, and documentation of the track fossils found at UCM. The second section will contain papers reviewing and analyzing the geological setting of the UCM site, so that the tracks can be placed into the perspective of modern understanding of plate tectonics and the role such a process has played in Alabama natural history. This section will also include the major papers based on analysis of the tracks themselves as well as the plants. The third section will include papers on the impact of the Union Chapel Mine on amateur and professional paleontology in Alabama, to lay out perspectives for the future of this kind of work in Alabama. The final section will be an atlas of the best trackways and plant fossils found at the Union Chapel Mine.

To get an idea of the cost connected with publishing the monograph, we contacted University Printing in Tuscaloosa. Based on the numbers of papers and expected number of pages per article, as well as the number of atlas photographs, we estimate that the monograph will be a 250 page document. We expect that black and white will be adequate for presentation of the photographs, because most of the slabs have very little color. For 2,000 copies, the estimated cost is $10,000. We seek a grant of this sum to directly pay the printer.

The monograph project is more than simply an idea, it is also a project in progress. Contributors to the volume are actively working on their articles. To insure that the monograph has a high quality, the publication is being edited by one BPS member and two professional geologists. The monograph will undergo peer review.