How phylogeny can be a tool for ichnosystematics?

The need to improve dinosaur tracks zoological attribution has led to experiment phylogenetic analysis as a tool in order to more closely parallelize ichnosystematics and bone based systematics. According to Carrano & Wilson (2001) a ...“trackmakers should be identified primarily by skeletal structures that are both preserved in the ichnofossils and synapomorphies of some body-fossil clade.”. Indeed this attempt to parallelize the ichnosystematics with the phylogeny of dinosauromorphs has been done based on the rationale that many characters of dinosaur locomotion derive from biomechanical constraints. The latter depend on osteological features related among them by ancestor/descendant relationships. These characters could, at least partially, have been recorded in well preserved footprints and trackways, allowing to attribute the ichnofossils to bone based groups on the basis of the analysis of phylogenetic characters. In this paper we support the proposal that well preserved and correctly described ichnotaxa might have a real phylogenetic value. Investigate to what extent a footprint can be considered as a delegated of an organism, is a key step to demonstrate the potential of dinosauromorphs Ichnology. The current and the future results open new perspectives to the Ichnology and could be very important in paleogeography studies. Reference Carrano M.T. & Wilson J.A. (2001). Taxon distributions and the tetrapod track record. Paleobiology, 27 (3): 564-582.