Animal tracks are the imprints left behind in soil

Soil

Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...

, snow

Snow

Snow is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by...

, mud

Mud

Mud is a mixture of water and some combination of soil, silt, and clay. Ancient mud deposits harden over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone . When geological deposits of mud are formed in estuaries the resultant layers are termed bay muds...

, or other ground surfaces that an animal walk across. Animal tracks are used by hunters in tracking

Tracking (hunting)

Tracking in hunting and ecology is the science and art of observing animal tracks and other signs, with the goal of gaining understanding of the landscape and the animal being tracked...

 their prey and by naturalists

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 to identify animals living in a given area.

Books are commonly used to identify animal tracks, which may look different based on the weight of the particular animal and the type of strata in which they are made.

Tracks can be fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

ized over millions of years. It is for this reason we are able to see fossilized dinosaur tracks in some types of rock formations. These types of fossils are called trace fossils since they are a trace of an animal left behind rather than the animal itself.

External links

• African Tracker