Traces are better known in their fossilized form than in modern sediments. This makes it difficult to interpret some f… 展开

Trace fossils are generally difficult or impossible to assign to a specific maker. Only in very rare occasions are the makers found in association with their tracks. Further, entirely different organisms may produce identica… 展开

Trace fossils are important paleoecological and paleoenvironmental indicators, because they are preserved in situ, or in the life position of the organism that made them. Because identical fossils can be created by a ran… 展开

Ichnofacies are assemblages of individual trace fossils that occur repeatedly in time and space. Palaeontologist Adolf Seilacher pioneered the concept of ichnofacies, whereby geologists infer the state of a sedimentary syst… 展开

Most trace fossils are known from marine deposits. Essentially, there are two types of traces, either exogenic ones, which are made on the surface of the sediment (such as tracks) or endogenic ones, which are made within the l… 展开

The earliest complex trace fossils, not including microbial traces such as stromatolites, date to 2,000 to 1,800 million years ago. This is far too early for them to have an animal origin, and they are thought to have been for… 展开