Trace fossil analysis / Анализ окаменелостей

This is a course book – meaning that it intends to confer not knowledge, but skill. The need for this skill becomes obvious if we look at the changing role of trace fossils during the last decades. From objects that were treated in standard paleontology textbooks, at best, under “Miscellanea”, together with problematica, coprolites and pseudofossils useless as index fossils, they have become subject of a special field, paleoichnology. A journal (ICHNOS), Ichnological Newsletters and regular workshops have been established, symposia are held, and the literature has increased exponentially. This success stems mainly from the intimate connection of ichnology with sedimentology and the importance that both fields have for paleoenvironmental and basin analysis, which becomes more and more important in petroleum exploration.

This useful connection, however, also had its price. In the hands of biogeologists, trace fossils easily loose their significance as unique biological documents. They are commonly treated summarily as “bioturbation”, a term that was originally meant to describe the biogenic destruction of primary depositional structures and the lack of distinctive trace morphologies. In a more quantitative form, “ichnofabrics”, this approach has had considerable success. <...>