New clues from Foresta/Devil’s Trails: The elephant trackway and the puzzling trunk’s impressions

Abstract

This research provides a critical reappraisal of the elephant footprints left by a young elephant on an ignimbrite deposit of the Roccamonfina volcano (Tora-Piccilli, Central Italy) and the associated problematic trunk traces. The note discusses the most conceivable direction followed by the walking elephant and the reliability of the impressions that the elephant’s distal trunk would have left. The elephant’s traces are currently visible at the upper edge of the steep slope and on the sub-horizontal pathway that runs at the top of the ≈350 ka old pyroclastic ignimbrite (LS7 unit) of the Roccamonfina’s Brown Leucitic Tuff (385-230 ka). We discussed how challenging it could be to accurately recreate the dynamics of the elephant’s movements, the morphological features of alleged distal trunk traces, and the modality of the trunk resting on the substrate. The latter depends on the modifications of the distal trunk’s shape caused by the dynamics of the trunk’s contact with the ground. According to the scant information that is now available, the elephant walked along the F/DT prehistoric pathway from east to west. An alternative hypothesis also deserves attention. The elephant might have climbed the steep slope diagonally, proceeding from southeast to northwest and then westward along the pathway. It possibly used its trunk to support itself when it reached the pathway.