One hole in a shell is unremarkable. Several in a repeating pattern is a story. Above is a right valve (exterior) of the oyster Pycnodonte vesicularis from the Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) of southwestern France. It was collected during our fantastic summer excursion into the Type Campanian at the Archiac location, which had beautiful exposures of the Aubeterre Formation. Note the jagged hole near the center, the subject of this post.
Here is the other side of the right valve (the interior). We have multiple such examples in our collection, all in right valves and all near or on what would have been the oyster’s adductor (closing) muscle attachment. (Those of you with sharp eyes may also find some sweet Rogerella borings made by barnacles, along with several encrusting bryozoan colonies.)
A closer view of the hole showing spalled shell layers. (Also more bryozoans!)
Another close view of the above hole on the other side of the valve. It appears that these holes have been produced by some hard object punching through, spalling away the edges. This is what some predators do to shelled organisms to break them apart. Pether (1995) named the “ballistic trace” resulting from stomatopod shrimp predation as Belichnus. Cadée and de Wolf (2013) extended the range of trace makers to include seagulls. In both cases the predators essentially “spear” the shell, with the ensuing hole looking rather squarish and jagged. This is one of the “fracture-shaped bioerosion traces” in the architectural analysis of Buatois et al. (2017).
In our Cretaceous examples, the culprit was most likely some type of stomatopod (a large, diverse and long-lived group) smacking its way into the oysters through the thin right valve. Striking the muscle attachment would be the quickest way of forcing the shell open to reveal all the oysters goodness. The previously oldest example of Belichnus in the fossil record is Oligocene (David, 1997), so this occurrence extends the range back to the Late Cretaceous. That’s not a big deal because the ichnotaxon (trace fossil formal name) is relatively young and those who would look for it are very few. Its stratigraphic range is still maturing.
Update: Katherine Marenco sent this great video of mantis shrimp in action, including a “smasher”.
References:
Buatois, L., Wisshak, M., Wilson, M.A. and Mángano, G. 2017. Categories of architectural designs in trace fossils: A measure of ichnodisparity. Earth-Science Reviews 164: 102-181.
Cadée, G. C. and de Wolf, P. 2013. Belichnus traces produced on shells of the bivalve Lutraria lutraria by gulls. Ichnos 20: 15-18.
David, A. 1997. Predation by muricid gastropods on Late-Oligocene (Egerian) molluscs collected from Wind Brickyard, Eger, Hungary. Malak Táj 16: 5–12
Pether, J. 1995. Belichnus new ichnogenus, a ballistic trace on mollusc shells from the Holocene of the Benguela region, South Africa. Journal of Paleontology 69: 171-181.
