neoichnology
The iconic fossil Chondrites is broadly seaweed-shaped, and is one of the most common—and historically important—fossil burrows. What animal produced such a complex burrow, and why? I tried to answer this question by assembling a team of 16 researchers from different disciplines. The results have…
Read MoreThe Northern Adriatic Sea is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea. As a shallow (average depth: 35 m), semi-enclosed sea lying on continental crust, it is an ideal model for past epeiric (epicontinental) seas. In his 2007 book "The Northern Adriatic Ecosystem: Deep Time…
Read MoreIchnosummer 2019 started in Portugal! This will be a period of intense fieldwork in the Palezoioic and Mesozoic units of Iberia. Here I am (left) with Carlos Neto de Carvalho (right). What will we find in the Ordovician rocks of UNESCO Geopark Naturtejo?
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The seafloor of the Ligurian Sea is more than an expanse of sand. In fact, it often features traces of life-substrate interactions, such as these circular 'craters'. What are they? They are feeding pits produced by fishes, almost identical to the trace fossil Piscichnus. This…
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This photo gallery documents my typical day on the field during autumn times. I check field tools on the beach, I start up my GPS-equipped camera, then I fit into the wetsuit... and then I splash into the cold water! Succesively, my fieldwork basically consists…
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Just as its name implies, a quadrat is a square frame. Despite its simplicity, the imaged quadrat plays a fundamental role in my research about modern traces of life-substrate interactions. In fact, I place the quadrat on the seafloor and then the traces within that…
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This photo gallery post documents the typical fieldwork day of autumn season: (1) Wearing the wetsuit and entering the seawater; (2) Placing a quadrat on the seafloor; (3) Photographing the quadrat with a GPS-based camera; (4) Counting eventual burrows within the quadrat; (5) repeating steps…
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Below the seafloor surface lies a vast, complex ecosystem, one of the Earth’s lesser-known environments. Here, marine animals produce complex burrow systems: What is the function of these structures? What is their distrubution? How did they evolve during the last 600 million years? I am…
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Today I continued conducting quadrat sampling in the amazing Ligurian Sea. This series of photos shows a quadrat sampling session - from snorkelling to spotting a burrow with a mound! Each and every quadrat-based observation is georeferenced by GPS, so that in the laboratory I…
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Today I photographed paired openings on the seafloor. These openings have been produced by burrowing bivalves (clams) to keep contact with the oxygenated seawater. The fossil burrows Siphonichnus and Teichichnus are possible analogues of this burrow system, spotted on the sandy seafloor of the Ligurian…
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On some seafloors of the Ligurian Sea, sediment mounds tower smaller openings. Each mound is likely to be connected with the nearby openings, forming a tunnel system that resembles the fossil burrow Thalassinoides. Thalassinoides is a genus of fossil burrow consisting of horizontal branched tunnels…
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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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Today I spotted a gastropod leaving a locomotion trail... almost identical to Archaeonassa, an ichnofossil known from the Precambrian!
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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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