Monday, March 9, 2015

Cambrian mystery trace fossil

I have been puzzled by this Early Cambrian trace fossil ever since I collected it about 35 years ago while on a field trip with my paleontology class. The trace consists of two parallel grooves that show up on the bottom of a bed of slightly metamorphosed sandy siltstone. What you see is the sediment that infilled the grooves (the sediment constitutes a cast). The trace is from the Inyo Mountains, California. I wonder what kind of animal could have made this trace. Did a single animal make it while crawling over the surface of the muddy sediment? Or, did two animals crawling alongside each other make the grooves?

I have tentatively identified this trace fossil (i.e., technically speaking, an ichnofossil) as Scolicia sp.

If anyone has a better identification, please let me know via the comments option on this blog site.

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1 comment:

  1. 马光志March 9, 2015 at 9:51 AM

    May be it is made by a trilobite.
    Look at the last pic of this page:
    http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%89%E8%91%89%E8%9F%B2
    I think you should watch this video:
    The 2nd of 「Lost Worlds --- vanished lives」,the name is 「Putting Flesh on Bones」,from 16:24 to 17:26.
    The video is made by BBC in 1989.

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