2 fossils from my yard, Dire Wolf track?

[Slingshot]

I am in the middle of limestone country in Tennessee and fossils are very common here. These two came out of my yard of this old place I am cleaning up. I think one is of some kind of tree, and the other I just found as I was clearing up an old fire ring in my yard, and I think it could be a Dire Wolf track. I'm a good tracker, and spotted it as soon as I flipped the stone over. So washed it up and got the mud out of the recesses and it even looks more like the four claws of a canine in soft soil and is about 4 inches wide. Of course it is a stone now, kind of reddish in hue and not like the limestone the tree part is in. What do you fossil experts think?

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[Harry Pristis]

Carboniferous plant impression on one side and a putative Late Pleistocene canid track on the other. What are the odds of that happening? That's a span of 300,000,000 years, or so. If it is a track at all, it would have to be from a large amphibian.

 

[Slingshot]

Actually that is two different rocks, one with the tree part and the other with what I just had a gut feeling were some kind of wolf track.

 

[joesmarbles]

Tree is Lepididendron, I have a branching section about two feet tall.....Joe McDonough

 

[yakker]

And I can't see a pad- where there might have been one... ?? Yakker

 

[Slingshot]

I'll try and get some more pics in the sun tomorrow. I can tell that the track was made in very wet mud though by the uplift around the toes, and what I think is the fourth claw on the right where the then mud was pushed forward and is swirled and mounded there. I believe this is a rear paw print because of the way the claws are angled in relation to the toes. Here are a couple of wolf track pics I found on the net in what I imagine are similar circumstances. I'm a long time and accomplished tracker, and know that the perfect track is unusual, except in snow. My first impression when I turned the stone over and saw the track which was packed with dirt was that it was a wolf. I think the round holes were some sort of plant stems. Lot more questions than answers, and I can tell the track was pretty fresh whenever it was covered over by the next layer of sediment, but without any signs of rain.
I also sent the pics to Tom Brown in New Jersey, long considered to be best tracker in America and I thought he might have some better ideas, but haven't heard back from him.
Another thought that has formalized is that this could be a three toed animal, maybe a reptile, with what I originally took for the right claw actually being the stem of a plant that has been partially pushed over in the mud, like what were in the round holes, since it has a similar diameter to it. A good washing and close examination of the bottom of the right gash should provide better clues.
Whatever it is I'm stoked with the oldest track I have ever found.
Any other ideas - anybody

 

[Slingshot]

More pics of the track in better light. The stone weighs just under 30 lbs., and with the track on top it's approximately 7' high, 12" long, and 9" wide. It came out of a fire ring from where former occupants of my home burned stuff which I am presently working to clean it out. So the stone did not come from far away and there might be more pieces to find yet and as you can see I have plenty of rocks to examine. I tried to make the top of the stone level by putting small boards beneath it, but the original level of the ground could have been at an angle off level.
The slash on the right is definitely a claw mark, as I cleaned it out and can see the definite groove of a claw in it's triangular depression, making this a four toed animal, and I can see slight mounding around where the paw pad would be, with marks of what I think were made by small sticks that got into the track before it became covered with the next layer of sediment.
So what kind of animal with four toes and exposed canine like claws would be around to make a track in mud that has now turned into stone? I don't know much about fossils and never paid a lot of attention to them they are so frequent in this area. There is a limestone bluff about a mile north from here that has more seashells than limestone in it, and seashells are everywhere around here. The only mammal remains I have seen was what appears to be a mastodon, or animal with tusks, the skull of which is imbedded in the stone wall of a small cave about a mile south of here.
Any ideas what I have here?

 

[Slingshot]

More pics...