Salinas de Anana, Spain
Unlike dinosaur tracks, mammal tracks are extremely rare. The tracks left
by a very diverse community of mammals and birds at Salinas de Anana
are dated to the Miocene 20 million years ago. Among the tracks are
those of an adult cat, probably a female, accompanied by at least 2
juvenile cats, likely her offspring. These are the oldest known fossil cats
tracks and are a bit different from modern cats as can be see from this
picture taken from the book Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives by Alan
Turner and Maurico Anton, and also a drawing of the actual track.
Salinas de Anana is located west of the city of Vitoria in northern Spain.
It is an ancient site where Romans mined salt (and so is on the tourist
maps). The remains of this can still be seen and salt extraction continues
today. In the early 1990s a German geology graduate student was
walking along the dirt road just past the end of the paved road when he
saw mammal tracks in the underlying bedrock about 70cm below the
ground surface. Little did he know that he had discovered perhaps the
richest site for Miocene mammal tracks in the world.
A small section of the site was excavated and studied for 15 days.
Rubber casts were made of the track site and two scientific papers were
published in Spain. The tracks were then covered with rubber used in
road making and then covered over with soil. By now it had been
revegetated. It is on private land and the owner promised not to disturb
it which is the way I found it on June 27, 2004. As remarkable as the
tracks are, the site is unprotected and in the hands of a local farmer. Of
the two rubber casts that were made one is in the museum in Bilbao,
Spain on the north coast and one is lost in the town of Salinas de Anana.
Salinas de Anana
the original
track. The
track is about
5cm long.
track and used artistic license to
draw the cat. Note the dew claw
much closer to the pad than in
modern cats.