Bifurculapes

Edward Hitchcock erected the ichnogenus Bifurculapes, meaning "two little forked feet," for trace fossils that were discovered in the Early Jurassic Turners Falls Formation in the Deerfield Basin of Massachusetts. They are insect or crustacean trackways that consist of two rows of two to three tracks per series, with the two larger tracks being oriented parallel or oblique to the trackway axis. The third track, when present, is much smaller than the other two and is oriented approximately perpendicular to the trackway axis. Medial drag marks sometimes are present between the track rows. In trace fossil classification schemes based on behavior, Bifurculapes is considered a repichnion, or locomotion trace. Getty (2020) considered Bifurculapes to represent locomotion under water based on the orientation of some trackways relative to sedimentary structures called current lineations.

A picture published with the record for Bifurculapes. What it shows has not been checked.

Patrick Getty · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
IchnofossilsPBDB

Time the record covers

At most 1.9 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 201.4 Mya and 199.5 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 1 occurrenceEarly Jurassic — about 1 of 1 occurrenceEarly Jurassic201–201 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences201–201 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences201–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–200 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences200–199 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences201.9 Mya199 Mya

1 occurrence of Bifurculapes on record, most of them in the Early Jurassic. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

1 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

1 formation

Moenave — 37.09°N, 113.56°W

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The named rock units Bifurculapes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Bifurculapes and its relatives

Early Jurassic

Where Bifurculapes and its relatives were recorded in the Early Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

6 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Bifurculapes, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Bifurculapes

Credit
Patrick Getty
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Bifurculapes was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itIchnofossils through timeFormations of the Early JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hitchcock 1858