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September 2018

Trace of the day: Nereites

The fossil record preserves abundant horizontal traces with sediment pads. These traces, known as Nereites , have tradistionally been attributed to worm tracemakers, but then researchers pictured horseshoe crabs leaving Nereites-like traces. I also documentes Nereites-like traces made by arthropods (hermit crabs) in the Adriatic…

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Green spheres underwater

What are those green spheres? They are algae of the species Codium bursa! During today's actuopaleontology survey I also met damselfishes (Chromis chromis), pen shells (Pinna sp.) and sea urchins.

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Trace of the day: Archaeonassa

Today I spotted a gastropod leaving a locomotion trail... almost identical to Archaeonassa, an ichnofossil known from the Precambrian!

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Snorkelling in the Thyrrenian Sea

I was excited about today’s snorkelling dive in the Thyrrenian Sea, on the Italian coast. I was there to map burrows, but the richness of underwater life deserved some non-ichnological photos!

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An octopus within its burrow

I got these pictures of this amazing octopus (within its burrow) while mapping burrows on the seafloor of the Ligurian sea.

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Actuopaleontology: not only burrows

Here are some highlights from today’s actuopaleontological snorkelling survey, including a pen shell (Pinna sp.) and the Mediterranean red sea star (Echinaster sepositus)

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Fishes

A major part of my on-going research is mapping the products of modern life-substrate interactions – e.g. burrows and trails. However, sometimes it is impossible to ignore other wonders of  the marine ecosystem such as these fishes, including damselfishes (Chromis chromis) and saddled seabreams (Oblada…

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