Gastrochaenolites

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Gastrochaenolites (G) and Entobia (E) in limestone cobble from the Los Banos Formation, Upper Miocene, SE Spain. Miocene Bored Cobble Cut labeled.jpg
Gastrochaenolites (G) and Entobia (E) in limestone cobble from the Los Banós Formation, Upper Miocene, SE Spain.

Gastrochaenolites is a trace fossil formed as a clavate (club-shaped) boring in a hard substrate such as a shell, rock or carbonate hardground. The aperture of the boring is narrower than the main chamber and may be circular, oval, or dumb-bell shaped (Kelly and Bromley, 1984). Gastrochaenolites is most commonly attributed to bioeroding bivalves such as Lithophaga and Gastrochaena (Kleeman, 1980). The fossil ranges from the Ordovician to the Recent (Taylor and Wilson, 2003; Vinn and Wilson, 2010). The first Lower Jurassic Gastrochaenolites ichnospecies is Gastrochaenolites messisbugi Bassi, Posenato, Nebelsick, 2017. This is the first record of boreholes and their producers (mytilid bivalves) in one of the larger bivalves of the globally occurring Lithiotis fauna which is a unique facies in the Lower Jurassic Tethys and Panthalassa.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trace fossil</span> Geological record of biological activity

A trace fossil, also known as an ichnofossil, is a fossil record of biological activity by lifeforms but not the preserved remains of the organism itself. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, which are the fossilized remains of parts of organisms' bodies, usually altered by later chemical activity or mineralization. The study of such trace fossils is ichnology and is the work of ichnologists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bioerosion</span> Erosion of hard substrates by living organisms

Bioerosion describes the breakdown of hard ocean substrates – and less often terrestrial substrates – by living organisms. Marine bioerosion can be caused by mollusks, polychaete worms, phoronids, sponges, crustaceans, echinoids, and fish; it can occur on coastlines, on coral reefs, and on ships; its mechanisms include biotic boring, drilling, rasping, and scraping. On dry land, bioerosion is typically performed by pioneer plants or plant-like organisms such as lichen, and mostly chemical or mechanical in nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carmel Formation</span> Geological formation in Utah, USA

The Carmel Formation is a geologic formation in the San Rafael Group that is spread across the U.S. states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, north east Arizona and New Mexico. Part of the Colorado Plateau, this formation was laid down in the Middle Jurassic during the late Bajocian, through the Bathonian and into the early Callovian stages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calcite sea</span> Sea chemistry favouring low-magnesium calcite as the inorganic calcium carbonate precipitate

A calcite sea is a sea in which low-magnesium calcite is the primary inorganic marine calcium carbonate precipitate. An aragonite sea is the alternate seawater chemistry in which aragonite and high-magnesium calcite are the primary inorganic carbonate precipitates. The Early Paleozoic and the Middle to Late Mesozoic oceans were predominantly calcite seas, whereas the Middle Paleozoic through the Early Mesozoic and the Cenozoic are characterized by aragonite seas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carbonate hardgrounds</span>

Carbonate hardgrounds are surfaces of synsedimentarily cemented carbonate layers that have been exposed on the seafloor. A hardground is essentially, then, a lithified seafloor. Ancient hardgrounds are found in limestone sequences and distinguished from later-lithified sediments by evidence of exposure to normal marine waters. This evidence can consist of encrusting marine organisms, borings of organisms produced through bioerosion, early marine calcite cements, or extensive surfaces mineralized by iron oxides or calcium phosphates. Modern hardgrounds are usually detected by sounding in shallow water or through remote sensing techniques like side-scan sonar.

<i>Trypanites</i> Trace fossil

Trypanites is a narrow, cylindrical, unbranched boring which is one of the most common trace fossils in hard substrates such as rocks, carbonate hardgrounds and shells. It appears first in the Lower Cambrian, was very prominent in the Ordovician Bioerosion Revolution, and is still commonly formed today. Trypanites is almost always found in calcareous substrates, most likely because the excavating organism used an acid or other chemical agent to dissolve the calcium carbonate. Trypanites is common in the Ordovician and Silurian hardgrounds of Baltica.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matmor Formation</span>

The Matmor Formation is a geologic formation of up to 100 metres (330 ft) thick, that is exposed in Hamakhtesh Hagadol in southern Israel. The Matmor Formation contains fossils from a Jurassic equatorial shallow marine environment. Bivalves, gastropods, sponges, corals, echinoderms, and sclerobionts are present in the Matmor Formation to various degrees. The stratigraphy of the Matmor Formation consists of alternating layers of limestone and marl.

Alveolinella is a genus of larger fusiform porcelaneous alveolinids from the Miocene to Recent with apertures on the septal face in multiple rows and aligned partitions (septula) dividing the primary chambers. Aveolinella is a larger foraminifer from the milioline family Alveolinidae. Like other miliolines, they have imperforate porcelaneous walls.

<i>Petroxestes</i> Trace fossil

Petroxestes is a shallow, elongate boring originally found excavated in carbonate skeletons and hardgrounds of the Upper Ordovician of North America. These Ordovician borings were likely made by the mytilacean bivalve Corallidomus as it ground a shallow groove in the substrate to maintain its feeding position. They are thus the earliest known bivalve borings. Petroxestes was later described from the Lower Silurian of Anticosti Island (Canada) by Tapanila and Copper (2002) and the Miocene of the Caribbean by Pickerill et al. (2001).

<i>Rogerella</i>

Rogerella is a small pouch-shaped boring with a slit-like aperture currently produced by acrothoracican barnacles. These crustaceans extrude their legs upwards through the opening for filter-feeding. They are known in the fossil record as borings in carbonate substrates from the Devonian to the Recent.

<i>Entobia</i> Trace fossil

Entobia is a trace fossil in a hard substrate formed by sponges as a branching network of galleries, often with regular enlargements termed chambers. Apertural canals connect the outer surface of the substrate to the chambers and galleries so the sponge can channel water through its tissues for filter feeding. The fossil ranges from the Devonian to the Recent.

<i>Sphenothallus</i> Extinct genus of aquatic animals

Sphenothallus is a problematic extinct genus lately attributed to the conulariids. It was widespread in shallow marine environments during the Paleozoic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tentaculita</span> Extinct class of uncertain affiliation

Tentaculita is an extinct class of uncertain placement ranging from the Early Ordovician to the Middle Jurassic. They were suspension feeders with a near worldwide distribution. For a more thorough discussion, see Tentaculites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sclerobiont</span>

Sclerobionts are collectively known as organisms living in or on any kind of hard substrate. A few examples of sclerobionts include Entobia borings, Gastrochaenolites borings, Talpina borings, serpulids, encrusting oysters, encrusting foraminiferans, Stomatopora bryozoans, and “Berenicea” bryozoans.

<i>Osprioneides</i> Trace fossil

Osprioneides is an ichnogenus of unbranched, elongate borings in lithic substrate with oval cross−section, single−entrance and straight, curved or irregular course. Osprioneides kampto Beuck and Wisshak, 2008 is the largest known Palaeozoic boring trace. It occurs in the Ordovician and Silurian (Wenlock) of Baltica. The borings are up to 120 mm long measuring 5–17 mm in diameter. The distribution of Osprioneides is more environmentally limited than that of Trypanites in the Silurian of Saaremaa, Estonia (Baltica). Osprioneides probably occurred only in large hard substrates of relatively deepwater muddy bottom open shelf environments. Osprioneides were relatively rare, as compared to Trypanites-Palaeosabella borings in the Wenlock of Saaremaa.

<i>Gastrochaena</i> Genus of bivalves

Gastrochaena is a genus of saltwater clams, marine bivalve molluscs in the family Gastrochaenidae. The type species of this genus is Gastrochaena cuneiformis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pholad borings</span>

Pholad borings are tubular burrows in firm clay and soft rock that have been created by bivalve molluscs in the family Pholadidae. The common names of clams in this family are "pholads", "piddocks", and "angel wings"; the latter because their shells are white, elongated and tend to be shaped like a wing and have sculpture somewhat reminiscent of a wing.

This list of fossil arthropods described in 2014 is a list of new taxa of trilobites, fossil insects, crustaceans, arachnids and other fossil arthropods of every kind that have been described during the year 2014. The list only includes taxa at the level of genus or species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rotzo Formation</span> Jurassic geological formation in Italy

The Rotzo Formation is a geological formation in Italy, dating to roughly between 189 and 183 million years ago and covering the Pliensbachian stage of the Jurassic Period in the Mesozoic Era. Has been traditionally classified as a Sinemurian-Pliensbachian Formation, but a large and detailed dataset of isotopic 13C and 87Sr/86Sr data, estimated the Rotzo Formation to span only over the whole Pliensbachian. The Rotzo Formation represented the Carbonate Platform, being located over the Trento Platform and surrounded by the Massone Oolite, the Fanes Piccola Encrinite, the Lombadian Basin Medolo Group and Belluno Basin Soverzene Formation, and finally towards the south, deep water deposits of the Adriatic Basin. The also Pliensbachian Aganane Formation of Morocco represents a regional equivalent, both in deposition and faunal content.

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