Trace fossil facts for kids
Trace fossils (or ichnofossils) are geological records of biological activity. They are fossils, but not of the living things themselves. Probably the best-known examples are dinosaur trackways.
Trace fossils may be impressions made on the substrate by an organism. Burrows, borings, footprints, feeding marks, and root cavities are examples. The term includes the remains of other organic material produced by an organism – for example coprolites (fossilized droppings) or chemical markers. Stromatolites are sediment structures produced by bacteria. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, which are the fossilized remains of parts of organisms' bodies, usually altered by later chemical activity or mineralization.
Structures which are not produced by the behaviour of an organism are not considered trace fossils.
The study of traces is called ichnology. Traces reflect the behaviour, not usually not the biological affinity of their makers. They are given their own names in taxonomy, based on their appearance and the implied behaviour of their makers.
Contents
Gallery
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Skolithos trace fossil. Scale bar is 10 mm.
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Thalassinoides, burrows produced by crustaceans, from the Middle Jurassic, southern Israel
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Trypanites borings in the Ordovician from Kentucky. The borings are filled with diagenetic dolomite (yellowish). The boring on the far right cuts through a shell in the matrix.
Related pages
Images for kids
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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)
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Diagram showing how dinosaur footprints are preserved in different deposits
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Cast of a tridactyl footprint of theropod dinosaur "Eubrontes" from the Triassic of the Czech Republic
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Cross-section of mammoth footprints at The Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, South Dakota
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Mesolimulus walchi fossil and track, a rare example of tracks and the creature that made them fossilized together
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Petroxestes borings in a hardground from the Upper Ordovician of southern Ohio
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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.
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Numerous borings in a Cretaceous cobble, Faringdon, England; see Wilson (1986)
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Sponge borings (Entobia) and encrusters on a modern bivalve shell, North Carolina
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Entobia from the Prairie Bluff Chalk Formation (Upper Cretaceous). Preserved as a cast of the excavations.
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Helminthopsis ichnosp., a trace fossil from the Logan Formation (Lower Carboniferous) of Wooster, Ohio
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Lockeia from the Dakota Formation (Upper Cretaceous)
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Lockeia from the Chagrin Shale (Upper Devonian) of northeastern Ohio. This is an example of the trace fossil ethological group Fugichnia.
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Gnathichnus pentax echinoid trace fossil on an oyster from the Cenomanian of Hamakhtesh Hagadol, southern Israel
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Naticid boring in Stewartia from the Calvert Formation, Zone 10, Calvert County, Maryland (Miocene)
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Trace fossils as convex hyporeliefs on bottom of bed; Bull Fork Formation (Upper Ordovician); Caesar Creek, Ohio
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Inverted trace fossil of an unidentified tridactyl ornithopod
See also
In Spanish: Icnofósil para niños
