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Now that you have established that your trace fossil is a trackway, most authors agree on the following hierarchy of importance when it comes to ichnotaxobases (Bertling 2007, Knaust 2012): 1. Uni- or biseriality, 2. the number of individual tracks within the smallest element of the trackway, 3. the shape of the individual tracks.
Please note, that in trackways there is a high uncertainty when it comes to ichnotaxonomical determination. This has its reason in preservational differences (e.g. track vs undertrack; grain size of the substrate and its consistency, etc.), number of tracks (especially in underwater traces where the buoyancy may lift the tracemaker’s body and prevent some extremities to produce tracks) and of course interpretational biases. Trackways are repetitive series of individual elements. One of these elements may just be a left and a right food of a bipedal tracemaker, but might also be a series of individual tracks, e.g. six imprints produced by the extremities of an insect.
Uni- or biseriality?
Please choose, which kind of trackway you want to determine:
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