A
trackway is an ancient route of travel for people or animals. In
biology, a trackway can be a set of impressions in the soft earth, usually a set of
footprints, left by an animal. A
fossil trackway is the
fossilized imprint of a trackway. Trackways have been found all over the world. They are especially valuable for determining some characteristics of life-forms, such as behavior. Thus some trackways for hominids in
Africa showed that they lived together and were not solitary. The study of trackways is an aspect of
ichnology, the study of marks left by living organisms. Since identifying the makers of trackways has not ordinarily proved possible, trackway-makers are given the conventional
genus name
Ichniotherium, "marking creature".
