New paper on bryoimmuration and taphonomic engineering

I’m pleased to link to a new paper that has just appeared in the journal Lethaia. My wonderful coauthors are Caroline Buttler (National Museum Wales) and Paul Taylor (Natural History Museum, London). The paper explores the role calcitic bryozoans play in preserving molds of aragonitic shells, a process we call bryoimmuration. In the image above we have two views of a single specimen from the Cincinnatian (Upper Ordovician) of the Cincinnati, Ohio, region. It is a trepostome bryozoan that encrusted the exterior of a bivalve shell. The bivalve shell was aragonitic and thus dissolved away during diagenesis. The bryozoan skeleton is calcite, a mineral that does not dissolve as easily as its cousin aragonite. The surviving bryozoan skeleton thus preserved our only record of the now-dissolved bivalve shell. The larger concept of one group of organisms affecting the preservation of another we call taphonomic engineering. Below are cross-sections of these bryoimmuring bryozoans, with the original caption.

Fig. 3. Acetate peels of bryoimmuring bryozoans cut perpendicular to basal growth surface (longitudinal); all from the Upper Whitewater Formation (Katian) near Richmond, Indiana (locality as in Fig. 2). A, heterotrypid bryozoan that grew across the ribs of an ambonychid bivalve. Note the thin zooecial walls in the early fast-growing stage, later thickening upwards (CW‐148‐92). B, very thin sheet of a trepostome bryozoan that encrusted an ambonychid bivalve (CW‐148‐93). This bryozoan did not develop an exozone and is thus impossible to identify. C, heterotrypid bryozoan that developed a thick exozone while growing on an ambonychid bivalve shell (CW‐148‐94). The shell later dissolved and sediment took its place. D, multilaminar growth of a heterotrypid bryozoan on an ambonychid bivalve (CW‐148‐95). The bryozoan colony overgrew itself.

This research was supported by an award from the Henry Luce III Fund for Distinguished Scholarship at The College of Wooster. Nick Wiesenberg helped with the fieldwork. It was a fun project.