Wooster Geologists

Mark Wilson March 31st, 2013

Most people have seen this fossil fish type. Geologists, in fact, have probably seen Knightia eocaena Jordan, 1907, thousands of times. It is present in nearly every gift shop that sells fossils, usually as small plaques or glued to refrigerator magnets. It is the state fossil of Wyoming and, by all accounts, the most numerous fossil fish in the world. In fact, it is likely the most common vertebrate fossil ever. It is thus no surprise that Wooster has dozens of specimens, most of them donated by students and alumni.

Knightia lived in freshwater lakes throughout western North America during the Eocene. It is closely related to herring and sardines, and almost certainly had similar life habits. We know that it lived in large schools, and we suspect it had a diet of phytoplankton and insect larvae. It was low on the ecological food chain, just like its modern cousins, and so was an important food source for all sorts of larger fish, reptiles, birds and mammals.
We tend to see most often beautifully preserved, complete Knightia specimens like the one at the top of the page. This is because if a fossil is very common, collectors can afford to keep only the best specimens. It is fun, though, to see what the average Knightia looks like in the fossil record. Above is a specimen collected by our petrologist Meagen Pollock from an outcrop in Wyoming. Note that the fish are contorted and often overlapping — specimens that are usually discarded by collectors. This slab shows better that these fossils occur in vast, complicated, messy death assemblages, probably because of volcanic ash falls or quick changes in lake chemistry.
This is a digital reconstruction of Knightia (© N. Tamura). Note the deeply forked tail and flattened top of the head.

Knightia was named in 1907 by the accomplished and very problematic David Starr Jordan (1851-1931). Jordan was a well known fish expert, having been inspired by the iconic ichthyologist Louis Agassiz himself. He taught at several colleges and universities, eventually serving as president of Indiana University (at 34, the youngest university president at the time) and as the first president of Stanford University. He was a very successful university president, especially in the first years of Stanford.

But, but … David Starr Jordan was also a eugenicist, believing in compulsory sterilization of the “unfit”. On the bright side (if there is one here), he opposed war because it tended to kill the most fit members of society. Jordan also shockingly covered up the apparent murder of Jane Stanford, co-founder of the university, in 1905. Jordan does not look good at all in that story, most of which was sorted out only about ten years ago. Who would have guessed that a murder mystery could lurk in the taxonomic history of these pretty little fish?

References:

Grande, L. 1982. A revision of the fossil genus Knightia, with a description of a new genus from the Green River Formation (Teleostei, Clupeidae). American Museum Novitates 2731: 1-22.

Jordan, D.S. 1907. The fossil fishes of California; with supplementary notes on other species of extinct fishes. Bulletin, Department of Geology, University of California 5:136.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

Mark Wilson March 24th, 2013

This small oyster is not in itself unusual. In fact, it is one of the most common fossils in the Jurassic of western Europe: Praeexogyra acuminata (Sowerby, 1816). It may be better known by its older name: Ostrea acuminata. Local collectors call it the “sickle oyster” because of its curved shape. This specimen is from the Sharp’s Hill Formation (Middle Bathonian) exposed in the Snowshill Quarry near Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, England. I collected it on my first trip to England in 1985.
What attracted me to this particular shell can be seen in the above close-up: lots of little straight lines incised across its outer surface (along with a serpulid worm tube). The lines were scraped by the Aristotle’s Lantern of one or more regular echinoids (sea urchins). This is the trace fossil Gnathichnus pentax Bromley, 1975. We met this fossil last month cut into a Cretaceous oyster from Israel. One or more echinoids grazed over this Jurassic oyster, probably consuming algae and other organic materials.

Praeexogyra acuminata was an epifaunal filter-feeder, meaning it lived on the substrate sucking in seawater and sorting from it organic material for food. During the Middle Jurassic these oysters were so common that their shells formed thick deposits. It is possible that some deposits rich in these shells were formed in brackish waters rather than under fully marine conditions.

Ostrea acuminata was named by by the enthusiastic English natural historian James Sowerby (1757-1822). We met him earlier as the author of a Cretaceous bivalve genus.

References:

Bernard-Dumanois, A. and Delance, J-H. 1983. Microperforations par algues et champignons sur les coquilles des «Marnes à Ostrea acuminata (Bajocien supérieur) de Bourgogne (France), relations avec le milieu et utilisation paléobathymétrique. Geobios 16: 419-429.

Bernard-Dumanois, A. and Rat, P. 1983. Etagement des milieux sédimentaires marins. Paléoécologie des Huîtres dans les “Marnes à Ostrea acuminata” du Bajocien de Bourgogne (France). Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences Paris 296: 733-737.

Hudson, J.D. and Palmer, T.J. 1976. A euryhaline oyster from the Middle Jurassic and the origin of true oysters. Palaeontology 19: 79-93.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

Mark Wilson March 17th, 2013

The above is one of my favorite “fossils”, a commercially-available cast of the lower jawbone of Gigantopithecus blacki, a giant extinct ape. It was produced from an actual Pleistocene fossil found in a cave near Liucheng, Guangxi, in southern China. I like it especially because it is sometimes associated with the mythical “Bigfoot”.

Gigantopithecus blacki was the largest ape that ever lived: up to three meters tall and weighing over 500 kilograms. (G. blacki is known only from teeth and mandibles such as that shown above, so these size estimates are based on scaling.) It was a contemporary with early versions of our own species, which must have led to a few astounding encounters for our ancestors. G. blacki was two or three times heavier than the largest gorillas today.

Gigantopithecus blacki appears to have lived in bamboo forests. Striations on its teeth, and the occasional phytolith stuck in the enamel, shows that this species was a vegetarian. It may have even had a lifestyle much like today’s pandas.

The molars of Gigantopithecus blacki look surprisingly like ours with their multiple cusps and broad surfaces. This is the result of convergent evolution and not an indication of a recent common ancestry. (They are analogous features, not homologous.) G. blacki is now classified in the Subfamily Ponginae with their cousins the orangutans.

What is most fun about Gigantopithecus these days is its association with the “Bigfoot” illusion. Look at how seriously the people at the “Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization” take the possible connection of Gigantopithecus and Bigfoot. Despite their objections, we really can wonder why we’ve never found evidence of this giant ape in North America, including bones, teeth, legitimate footprints or real photographs. A living three-meter tall ape is a bit difficult for science to have missed! (Unless, of course, Bigfoot has supernatural powers.)

References:

Coichon, R. 1991. The ape that was – Asian fossils reveal humanity’s giant cousin. Natural History 100: 54–62.

Ciochon, R., et al. 1996. Dated co-occurrence of Homo erectus and Gigantopithecus from Tham Khuyen Cave, Vietnam. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 93: 3016–3020.

Jin, C., et al. 2009. A newly discovered Gigantopithecus fauna from Sanhe Cave, Chongzuo, Guangxi, South China. Chinese Science Bulletin 54: 788-797.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

Mark Wilson March 10th, 2013

Wooster geologists have again greatly benefited from the donation of a collection by an alumnus. George Chambers (’79), a successful professional photographer, sent us several boxes of minerals, rocks and fossils he had acquired in his lifelong passion for geology. (George was a geology major at Wooster in the class just after mine.) Among the many world-class specimens he gave us are two fossil ophiuroids (brittle stars). They are Ophiopetra lithographica Enay and Hess, 1962, from the Lower Hienheim Beds (Lower Tithonian, Upper Jurassic) near Regensburg, Germany. They are part of the “Fossillagerstätte Hienheim“, a preserved brittle star ecosystem in a lagoon at the edge of a Late Jurassic sea. This is the same set of lithographic limestones in which the famous bird fossil Archaeopteryx was found.
In both these images you see the spiny arms of the brittle stars twisted about. It is their flexibility and snake-like movements in life that provoked the scientific name ophiuroids (serpent-forms) for the brittle stars. The “brittle” term comes from their ability to autotomize (spontaneously detach) their arms when threatened, leaving a squirming distraction for a predator as they escape.
Ophiopetra lithographica is probably the most common fossil brittle star known. It was preserved by the countless millions in these Jurassic lagoons in Germany. Most geologists believe they were buried by fine-grained carbonate sediment suspended by sudden storms. As you can see in the above close-up, the preservation of the plates and spines is remarkable.

Most brittle stars are suspension feeders (sorting out food particles from the water), deposit feeders (eating organic material in the sediment) or scavengers. Ophiopetra lithographica may have been a carnivore with its heavily-spined arms and strong jaws. It likely ate small arthropods on the seafloor.

The evolution of brittle stars is interesting and controversial. They were relatively common in the Paleozoic and then just barely survived the Permian extinctions. Their rapid evolution into a variety of taxa in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic has led to many debates about their phylogeny. Even the placement of Ophiopetra into a family is a problem. Does it belong to the Family Aplocomidae where it was originally placed or to the older Family Ophiolepididae as has been recently suggested?

Our students will enjoy these fine fossils in the invertebrate paleontology course. They have doubled our collection of brittle stars! Thank you again to George Chambers for his thoughtfulness and generosity.

References:

Enay, R. and Hess, H. 1962. Sur la découvertes d’Ophiures (Ophiopetra lithographica n.g. n.sp.) dans le Jurassique supérieur du Haut-Valromey (Jura méridional). Eclogae geologicae Helvetiae 55: 657-678.

Hess, H. and Meyer, C.A. 2008. A new ophiuroid (Geocoma schoentalensis sp. nov.) from the Middle Jurassic of northeastern Switzerland and remarks on the Family Aplocomidae Hess 1965. Swiss Journal of Geosciences 101: 29-40.

Röper, M. and Rothgänger, M. 1998. Die Plattenkalke von Hienheim (Landkreis Kelheim) – Echinodermen-Biotope im Südfränkischen Jura. Eichendorf (Eichendorf Verlag), 110 S.

Stöhr, S. 2012. Ophiuroid (Echinodermata) systematics—where do we come from, where do we stand and where should we go? In: Kroh, A. and Reich, M. (Eds.) Echinoderm Research 2010: Proceedings of the Seventh European Conference on Echinoderms, Göttingen, Germany, 2–9 October 2010. Zoosymposia, 7: 147-161.

Thuy, B., Klompmaker, A.A. and Jagt, J.W.M. 2012. Late Triassic (Rhaetian) ophiuroids from Winterswijk, the Netherlands; with comments on the systematic position of Aplocoma (Echinodermata, Ophiolepididae). In: Kroh, A. and Reich, M. (Eds.) Echinoderm Research 2010: Proceedings of the Seventh European Conference on Echinoderms, Göttingen, Germany, 2–9 October 2010. Zoosymposia, 7: 163-172.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(1)

Mark Wilson March 3rd, 2013

This is the inside of a modern cockle shell (Dinocardium vanhyningi) found on a beach in Wilmington, North Carolina. Across the surface is a radiating series of pits, each of which was formed under a zooid of an encrusting cheilostome bryozoan colony, much like Ropalonaria described last week. This etched shell gives me an opportunity to tell a cautionary tale of trace fossils, slugs and taxonomy.
This scanning electron microscope image was taken by my friend and colleague Paul Taylor at The Natural History Museum in London. It shows a cheilostome bryozoan etching (the elongated pits) across a shell surface very much like the modern shell at the top of the page. In the lower right is a bit of the cheilostome bryozoan Amphiblestrum. This particular bryozoan did not make the pits themselves (it is oriented in a different direction), but another colony of the same species likely did. This assemblage comes from the Coralline Crag Formation (Pliocene) exposed in Broom Pit, Suffolk, England.

In 1999, Paul Taylor, Richard Bromley and I published a paper in the journal Palaeontology describing these bryozoan etching pits as a new ichnogenus (a category of trace fossil) with a Late Cretaceous to Holocene range. We invented (or so we thought) the name Leptichnus using the Greek roots leptos (‘flimsy, delicate, subtle’) and ichnos (‘track, footprint’). It was a fun little project, and we provided a useful name to embed this fossil in the literature.

This past fall, thirteen years after publication, I decided to write a Fossil of the Week entry on Leptichnus. In my innocence I searched Google for “Leptichnus” and was very surprised to find it has a Wikipedia page — and it was an East African slug! Yes, the beautiful name Leptichnus was preoccupied by a urocyclid terrestrial gastropod, Leptichnus Simroth, 1896, found in Kenya and Tanzania. 1896 is a long time before 1999, so Simroth’s name has priority over ours. The ichnogenus Leptichnus Taylor, Wilson and Bromley, 1999, thus became a junior homonym of the gastropod genus Leptichnus Simroth, 1896. We had to come up with a new name for it.
Above is the original 1896 description of Leptichnus The Slug by Heinrich Rudolf Simroth (1851-1917). He apparently came up with the name because this shell-less snail left a subtle trail behind it when it slithered. It is the first time I’ve seen the -ichnus suffix used for anything but a trace fossil.
Herr Doktor Professor Simroth was a German zoologist and malacologist educated at the University of Leipzig. He was a schoolteacher for his whole career, doing prodigious research in his spare time. His speciality was, unsurprisingly, terrestrial slugs. He worked on specimens brought back by scientific expeditions, including one in the short-lived colony of German East Africa. It is from this collected material he described Leptichnus. Simroth’s type collection was long considered lost, but many specimens were recently rediscovered in Berlin (Glaubrecht, 2010). These do not, alas, include any representatives of Leptichnus. The image above is of Simroth in 1902.

Taylor, Wilson and Bromley (2013) proposed the new name Finichnus to replace Leptichnus Taylor, Wilson and Bromley, 1999. To preserve the meaning of the original name, we substituted the Greek finos (‘fine, delicate’) for leptos.

The lesson of this story? Search, search, search for homonyms of new taxonomic names. In our defense, searching wasn’t as easy back in the 90s (Google’s search engine came online in 2000, for example, and Wikipedia began in 2001). At least the adventure introduced us to Heinrich Rudolf Simroth and his slugs!

References:

Glaubrecht, M. 2010. Slug(-gish) science, or an annotated catalogue of the types of tropical vaginulid and agriolimacid pulmonates (Mollusca, Gastropoda), described by Heinrich Simroth (1851–1917), in the Natural History Museum Berlin. Zoosystematics and Evolution 86: 15–335.

Rosso, A. 2008. Leptichnus tortus isp. nov., a new cheilostome etching and comments on other bryozoan-produced trace fossils. Studi Trentini – Acta Geologica 83: 75–85.

Simroth, H. 1896. Über bekannte und neue Urocycliden. Abhandlungen der Senckenbergischen Naturforschenden Gesellschaft 19: 281–312.

Taylor, P.D., Wilson, M.A. and Bromley, R.G. 1999. Leptichnus, a new ichnogenus for etchings made by cheilostome bryozoans into calcareous substrates. Palaeontology 42: 595–604.

Taylor, P.D., Wilson, M.A. and Bromley, R.G. 2013. Finichnus, a new name for the ichnogenus Leptichnus Taylor, Wilson and Bromley, 1999, preoccupied by Leptichnus Simroth, 1896 (Mollusca, Gastropoda). Palaeontology (in press).

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

Mark Wilson February 24th, 2013

Another trace fossil of a sort this week. Above you see the dorsal valve exterior of a strophomenid brachiopod from the Upper Ordovician of southeastern Indiana. Across the surface is a network of grooves looking a bit like a spider web. This is a feature formed when a soft-bodied ctenostome bryozoan colony etched its way down into the shell it was encrusting. Ropalonaria venosa Ulrich, 1879 is the official name of this fossil.
Above is a closer view of the same Ropalonaria venosa. Tiny crystals of yellow dolomite fill the excavations. The ctenostome bryozoan that made it had no skeleton and used some sort of chemical to dissolve the shell beneath it. The fidelity of this etching is good enough to identify various details of the colony structure and zooecial form. This is where our fossil classification system goes a bit awry: Is Ropalonaria a trace fossil (evidence of animal activity) or a kind of external mold of the original organism? Arguments have been made for each category, and the name Ropalonaria shows up on lists of both trace fossils and body fossils.
Ropalonaria venosa is the type species of the genus Ropalonaria erected by Edward Oscar Ulrich in 1879 (above in 1927). E.O. Ulrich, as he is better known, was one of the most colorful and controversial geologists of the late 19th and early 20th century. He was born in Covington, Kentucky, in 1857. Covington is across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, and is undergirded by the famous fossiliferous limestones and shales of the Cincinnatian Group (Upper Ordovician). Ulrich started as a child collecting fossils in the region. He was an early member of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, often bringing fossils to meetings for identifications. (There he met another young man very interested in fossils: the future paleontologist Charles Schuchert. Schuchert was the advisor of my advisor’s advisor, so he’s in my “academic genealogy”.)

Ulrich took courses at German Wallace College (today’s Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio) and the Ohio Medical College. He had an eclectic youth exploring all sorts of topics, from opera to spiritualism, but always kept geology and fossils close to his heart. He had an adventurous stint as a superintendent in a Colorado silver mine. Returning back east, Ulrich became an enormously productive geologist with the geological surveys of Illinois, Minnesota, and Ohio. He was President of the Paleontological Society in 1915. In 1931 he received the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, and the next year the Geological Society of America awarded him the prestigious Penrose Medal. He died in 1944 in Washington, D.C.

E.O. Ulrich is still a polarizing figure in American geology. He is famous for resisting the modern concept of facies in sedimentary geology, preferring a concept now known as “layer cake stratigraphy“. (In his defense, the rocks in the Cincinnati area really do fit much of his model; his error was extending it much too far.) Ulrich also has a reputation as a bit of a “splitter” in paleontology. (Someone who makes more species than necessary by “splitting” groups into smaller subgroups.)

Despite what we think of E.O. Ulrich today, his paleontological contributions have mostly held up, including the description of the intriguing fossil Ropalonaria.

References:

Bassler, R.S. 1944. Memorial to Edward Oscar Ulrich. Proceedings of the Geological Society of America for 1944: 331–351.

Pohowsky, R.A. 1978. The boring ctenostomate Bryozoa: taxonomy and paleobiology based on cavities in calcareous substrata. Bulletins of American Paleontology 73(301): 192 p.

Ruedemann, R. 1946. Biographical memoir of Edward Oscar Ulrich, 1857-1944. National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Biographical Memoirs, Volume XXIV, 7th Memoir, 24 pp.

Ulrich, E.O. 1879. Descriptions of new genera and species of fossils from the Lower Silurian about Cincinnati: Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History 2: 8-30.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

Mark Wilson February 17th, 2013

The scanning electron microscope (SEM) image above shows the tubes of the encrusting group known as hederelloids. They are among my favorite fossils. I was reminded of them recently while reading this advertisement for a novel in which, to my great surprise, hederelloids are a primary part of the plot! A mysterious black “fouling” destroys shipping. Scientists discover that it is made by a group long thought to be extinct — the hederelloids! There is even a page talking about the “science” behind the story. (Although I would think if they were serious they would spell “bryozoan” correctly.)
The hederelloids are a group of colonial encrusting organisms found from the Silurian through the Permian, with possible members in the Ordovician and the Triassic (Taylor and Wilson, 2008). They were entirely marine and were most common by far on Devonian brachiopods and corals. They are “runner-like” encrusters, meaning they grew sequentially across the substrate budding out new members of the colony. Their zooids (the skeletons that contained the individuals) are usually curved and made of microprismatic calcite secreted from the inside only. (This latter feature meant they could repair damage such as boreholes with patches from the inside; see Wilson and Taylor, 2006). The specimen above is a Devonian spiriferid brachiopod from northwestern Ohio with a hederelloid colony encrusting the dorsal valve.
Hederelloids were very diverse in their time. The SEM image above (courtesy of Paul Taylor at the Natural History Museum, London) shows at least two types of hederelloid on a rugose coral from the Devonian of New York. The large tube at the bottom has several lateral buds. At the very top of the view you can see a much smaller hederelloid growing in the opposite direction.
The earliest workers on hederelloids thought that they were cyclostome bryozoans of some type (see Bassler, 1939). They look superficially like the common genera Corynotrypa, Cuffeyella and Stomatopora. Hederelloids, though, are significantly larger on the whole, they do not bud in the same pattern as bryozoans, and they do not have lamellar walls. Their shell microstructure and budding patterns suggests instead that they may be related to the phoronids, making them a kind of lophophorate (lophophore-bearing organism; the lophophore is a tentacular feeding device). They could probably, like bryozoans, retract the lophophore into their tubes when necessary. The above photograph shows the underside of a hederelloid colony from the Devonian of Iowa. Note the distinctive budding pattern. The scattered spirals are microconchids.

This is a nice collection of hederelloids from the Devonian of New York. Notice the diversity of sizes, shapes and budding patterns. How can you not be fascinated by such enigmatic little creatures?

References:

Bassler, R.S. 1939. The Hederelloidea. A suborder of Paleozoic cyclostomatous Bryozoa. Proceedings of the United States National Museum 87: 25-91.

Taylor, P.D. and Wilson, M.A. 2008. Morphology and affinities of hederelloid “bryozoans”, p. 301-309.  In: Hageman, S.J., Key, M.M., Jr., and Winston, J.E. (eds.), Bryozoan Studies 2007: Proceedings of the 14th International Bryozoology Conference, Boone, North Carolina, July 1-8, 2007.  Virginia Museum of Natural History Special Publication 15.

Taylor, P.D., Vinn, O. and Wilson, M.A. 2010. Evolution of biomineralization in ‘lophophorates’. Special Papers in Palaeontology 84: 317-333.

Wilson, M.A. and Taylor, P.D. 2006. Predatory drillholes and partial mortality in Devonian colonial metazoans. Geology 34:565-568.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

Mark Wilson February 10th, 2013

What you see above is a bit of oyster shell with some curious small gouges in it. The oyster is Ilymatogyra (Afrogyra) africana (Lamarck, 1801) from the En Yorqe’am Formation (Cenomanian) exposed in Hamakhtesh Hagadol, southern Israel. The deep scratches are the trace fossil Gnathichnus pentax Bromley, 1975. As you can just make out in the lower center of the image, the grooves are overlapping series of five-pointed stars. That’s what makes this trace so cool — the stars were made by the unique feeding apparatus of a regular echinoid (sea urchin).
This is the business end of the modern sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (a preserved specimen in Wooster’s collection). You see here in the center the peristome, which is a circle of plates surrounding the mouth, with the sharp five-sided teeth protruding from the echinoid’s Aristotle’s Lantern. These animals slowly graze across hard substrates, using their teeth to scrape the surfaces for algae, fungi and adherent organisms like diatoms. The biting actions of the Aristotle’s Lantern produce the star-shaped incisions we know as the trace fossil Gnathichnus pentax.

I briefly sampled and studied an exposure of the fossiliferous En Yorqe’am Formation in 2003 during my first visit to Israel. The oyster shells in this unit provide one of the few examples of hard substrate communities in the tropics of the Late Cretaceous. The encrusters include ostreid and spondylid bivalves, the cyclostome bryozoan Stomatopora, and the agglutinating foraminiferan Acruliammina. Borings include those of barnacles (Rogerella elliptica) and sponges (Entobia aff. E. megastoma). There is also a sea urchin present (Heterodiadema lybicum) that was almost certainly the maker of the Gnathichnus pentax traces.

References:

Bromley, R.G. 1975. Comparative analysis of fossil and recent echinoid bioerosion. Palaeontology 18: 725-739.

Wilson, M.A. 2003. Paleoecology of a tropical Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) skeletozoan community in the Negev Desert of southern Israel. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 35(6): 420.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)

Mark Wilson February 3rd, 2013

What we have above is a heliolitid coral known as Protaraea richmondensis Foerste, 1909. It has completely encrusted a gastropod shell with its thin corallum. Stephanie Jarvis, a Wooster student at the time and now a graduate student at Southern Illinois University, found this specimen during her paleontology class field trip to the Whitewater Formation exposed near Richmond, Indiana.

Protaraea is a confusing taxon to my Invertebrate Paleontology students. It is a very common encruster in their Ordovician field collections, being found on hard substrates as varied as rugose corals and orthid brachiopods. It is so thin, though, that it is hard to believe it was a colonial coral. Plus it has tiny septa (vertical partitions) in its corallites (the holes that held the polyps), very unlike most corals of the heliolitid variety. This is a group the students have to identify by matching pictures and taking our word for it.

We can’t identify the gastropod underneath. Note that it has a sinus evident in the last whorl (an open slot parallel to the coiling). The coral grew right up to the edge of this sinus, preserving it and its extension through the shell.

References:

Alexander, R.R. and Scharpf, C.D. 1990. Epizoans on Late Ordovician brachiopods from southeastern Indiana. Historical Biology 4: 179-202.

Foerste, A.F. 1909. Preliminary notes on Cincinnatian fossils. Denison University, Scientific Laboratories, Bulletin 14: 208-231.

Mõtus, M.-A. and Zaika, Y. 2012. The oldest heliolitids from the early Katian of the East Baltic region. GFF 134: 225-234.

Ospanova, N.K. 2010. Remarks on the classification system of the Heliolitida. Palaeoworld 19: 268–277.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(2)

Mark Wilson January 27th, 2013

My Invertebrate Paleontology students know this as Specimen #8 in the trace fossil exercises section: “the big swirly thing”. It is a representative of the ichnogenus Zoophycos Massalongo, 1855. This trace is well known to paleontologists and sedimentologists alike — it is found throughout the rock record from the Lower Cambrian to modern marine deposits. It has a variable form but is generally a set of closely-overlapping burrow systems that produce a horizontal to oblique set of spiraling lobes. It was produced by some worm-shaped organism plunging into the sediments in a repetitive way, gradually making larger and larger downward-directed swirls.

Zoophycos is a useful indicator of ancient depositional conditions. It give its name, in fact, to an ichnofacies — a set of fossils and sediments characterize of a particular environment. In the Paleozoic it is found in shallow water and slope environments; from the Mesozoic on it is known almost entirely from deep-sea sediments. Our specimen is from the Borden Formation and was found amidst turbidite deposits, so it is probably from an ancient slope system.

There has been much debate about the behavior and objectives of the organisms who made Zoophycos. The traditional view is that it was formed by an animal mining the sediment for food particles, a life mode called deposit-feeding. Some workers, though, have suggested it could have been a food cache, a sewage system, and even an agricultural garden of sorts to raise fungi for food. I think in the end the simplest explanatory model is deposit-feeding, although with such a long time range, a variety of behaviors likely produced this trace.

Zoophycos was named in 1855 by the Italian paleobotanist Abramo Bartolommeo Massalongo (1824-1860). Massalongo was a member of the faculty of medicine at the University of Padua, chairing their botany department. (Medicine had broad scope in those days!) Why was he studying this trace fossil? Like most of the early scientists who noticed trace fossils, he thought it was some kind of fossil plant.
Zoophycos villae (Massalongo, 1855, plate 2)

References:

Bromley, R.G. 1991. Zoophycos: strip mine, refuse dump, cache or sewage farm? Lethaia 24: 460-462.

Ekdale, A.A. and Lewis, D.W. 1991. The New Zealand Zoophycos revisited: morphology, ethology and paleoecology. Ichnos 1: 183-194.

Löwemark, L. 2011. Ethological analysis of the trace fossil Zoophycos: Hints from the Arctic Ocean. Lethaia 45: 290–298.

Massalongo, A. 1855. Zoophycos, novum genus Plantarum fossilum, Typis Antonellianis, Veronae, p. 45-52.

Olivero, D. 2003. Early Jurassic to Late Cretaceous evolution of Zoophycos in the French Subalpine Basin (southeastern France). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 192: 59-78.

Osgood, R.G. and Szmuc, E.J. 1972. The trace fossil Zoophycos as an indicator of water depth. Bulletin of American Paleontology 62 (271): 5-22.

Sappenfield, A., Droser, M., Kennedy, M. and Mckenzie, R. 2012. The oldest Zoophycos and implications for Early Cambrian deposit feeding. Geological Magazine 149: 1118-1123.

• Uncategorized
• Comments(0)