Ichnology Facts for Kids

Dinosaur footprints, preserved at Dinosaur Ridge

Thalassinoides, burrows made by crustaceans, from the Middle Jurassic, Makhtesh Qatan, southern Israel

Ichnology is the study of trace fossils of once-living things.

Burrows, trackways, trails and borings are all examples of traces made by organisms. Scientists study traces made by plants and animals to try to determine their behavior. An ichnologist is a scientist whose area of study and research is ichnology.

A species name given to a fossil is called an ichnospecies. It is written in italics with a lower case initial. It is shown to be an ichnospecies by the abbreviation "isp".

Examples

Later Cambrian trace fossils from intertidal settings include Protichnites and Climactichnites, and others.
Mesozoic dinosaur footprints including Ichnotaxon such as Grallator and Atreipus (bipedal theropods) and Anomoepus.
Triassic to Recent termite mounds, which can be several square kilometers of sediment
Possible Avian footprints such as Saurexallopus.

Images for kids

Chirotherium footprints in a Triassic sandstone
The trackway Protichnites from the Cambrian, Blackberry Hill, central Wisconsin
Cross-section of mammoth footprints at The Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, South Dakota
This coprolite shows distinct top and bottom jaw bite marks, possibly from a prehistoric gar fish. Discovery location: South Carolina, US; age: Miocene; dimensions: 144.6mm X 63.41mm or 5.7” X 2.5”; weight: 558g (1lbs 4oz)
Mesolimulus walchi fossil and track, a rare example of tracks and the creature that made them fossilized together
Eubrontes, a dinosaur footprint in the Lower Jurassic Moenave Formation at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm, southwestern Utah
Diagram showing how dinosaur footprints are preserved in different deposits
Climactichnites wilsoni, probably trails from a slug-like animal, from the Cambrian, Blackberry Hill, central Wisconsin. The ruler in the background is 45 cm (18 in) long.
Petroxestes borings in a hardground from the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio
Rusophycus trace fossil from the Ordovician of southern Ohio. Scale bar is 10 mm.
Skolithos trace fossil. Scale bar is 10 mm.
Trypanites borings in an Upper Ordovician hardground from northern Kentucky. The borings are filled with diagenetic dolomite (yellowish). Note that the boring on the far right cuts through a shell in the matrix.
Ophiomorpha and Thalassinoides trace fossils produced by crustaceans found at Camacho formation from the Late Miocene in Colonia Department, Uruguay
Asteriacites (sea star trace fossil) from the Devonian of northeastern Ohio. It appears at first to be an external mold of the body, but the sediment piled between the rays shows that it is a burrow.
Numerous borings in a Cretaceous cobble, Faringdon, England; see Wilson (1986)
Sponge borings (Entobia) and encrusters on a modern bivalve shell, North Carolina
Entobia from the Prairie Bluff Chalk Formation (Upper Cretaceous). Preserved as a cast of the excavations.
Trace fossil Gyrochorte from the Carmel Formation (Middle Jurassic) of SW Utah.
Helminthopsis ichnosp., a trace fossil from the Logan Formation (Lower Carboniferous) of Wooster, Ohio
Gigandipus, a dinosaur footprint in the Lower Jurassic Moenave Formation at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm, southwestern Utah
Lockeia from the Dakota Formation (Upper Cretaceous)
Lockeia from the Chagrin Shale (Upper Devonian) of northeastern Ohio. This is an example of the trace fossil ethological group Fugichnia.
Gnathichnus pentax echinoid trace fossil on an oyster from the Cenomanian of Hamakhtesh Hagadol, southern Israel
Naticid boring in Stewartia from the Calvert Formation, Zone 10, Calvert County, Maryland (Miocene)
Trace fossils as convex hyporeliefs on bottom of bed; Bull Fork Formation (Upper Ordovician); Caesar Creek, Ohio
Inverted trace fossil of an unidentified tridactyl ornithopod

Ichnology facts for kids

Examples

Images for kids

See also