Towards a Renaissance in Tetrapod Ichnology: Florence 2004.

This volume developed around many of the contributions made by the participants (Fig. 1) in the Terrestrial Tetrapod Ichnofacies and Ichnotaxonomy special symposium held at the 32nd International Geological Congress, Florence, Italy, on August 23, 2004 (see review of the symposium by Lucas, 2005). The symposium and its poster session covered a broad spectrum of topics spanning much of the Phanerozoic (Devonian to Recent) and a wide variety of tetrapods (amphibians to hominids). This compilation highlights a significant polarity between studies that focus on very specific ichnotaxonomic problems that are of primary interest to specialists, and very broad issues that pertain to the philosophical underpinnings of global scale ichnofacies definitions and implications. These areas of investigation, while touched on in the symposium and informal discussion, are explored in much greater detail in the present volume.Whether through surprising new discoveries or the reevaluation of classic ichnofaunas, tetrapod ichnology has in recent years become far more visible as a sub-discipline than at any time it its 200-year history.We offer this volume as a further contribution to knowledge of this vigorous and active science.