Jack Milligan recently visited Patagonia to study turtle fossils from the Paleocene Salamanca Formation in Chubut, Argentina, analyzing trace fossils on turtle shells. This study is ongoing, but early observations indicate that the tracemakers behind the trace fossils seen on Chelid and Pan-chelid turtle carapaces and plastrons include alligatoroids, beetles, leeches, and barnacles.
The imageshows an example of a trace fossil left on a turtle fossil by a beetle, the morphologysimilar to Osteocallis isp.
Through this research, the trace fossils can be used to understand the taphonomic pathway of these turtles, and how the trace fossils can be used to inform paleoenvironmental conditions at different stages of taphonomy. In addition to the trace fossils, several paleopathologies were identified, many of which could have resulted from trophic interactions between the turtles and other animals.
Thanks to Dr. Juliana Sterli and Dr. Marcelo Krause for hosting this research at the MEF, this will be a very cool project!
Recently, new research by Gabriela Mángano, Luis Buatois, and coauthors from Stoney Brook University and the MUJA near Colunga, Asturias, Spain, on fecal mounds produced by arenicolid worms from the Upper Jurassic Lastres Formation in Asturias, Spain, has been featured in local news in Asturias. Students who have recently taken the Asturias geology field course offered through the University of Saskatchewan had the opportunity to see these trace fossils in the collections/galleries at the Museo del Jurásico de Asturias (MUJA).
Figure from Mángano et al., 2024 showing the stratigraphy and detailed sedimentologic characteristics of the lowermost Upper Jurassic interval of the Lastres Formation at Arroyo Solero containing one of the surfaces with fecal cast mounds, including a close-up picture of the deposits showing the bedding surface that contains fecal cast mounds in cross-section.
The fecal mounds were given the name Cumulusichnus asturiensis. They are made up of an accumulation of thin sandstone cords roughly 1 to 2.3 mm thick and are preserved on a paleosurface comprised of rippled sandstone formed by wave action. The traces are preferentially located within the depressions located between the crests of the ripples. In the modern, the worms that generate this type of structure are known as Arenicola marina, a benthic polychaete from the family Arenicolidae (also called lugworms) that can be found in estuaries, deltas, tidal flats, and shallow marine settings of Europe. North America and New Zealand. The worm lives upside down inside the sediment inside an L- or J-shaped tube (domichnia) and feeds on bacteria and various microorganisms that live within the substrate. The worm swallows sand, takes in nutrients, and expels the waste, forming small sandy fecal piles on the surface that resemble squiggles or spaghetti.
Figure from Mángano et al., 2024, showing examples of arenicolid fecal mounds from Playa España, Upper Jurassic Lastres Formation of Asturias, Spain. Scale bars are 2 cm long.
You can read the paper in the journal Nature here. You can watch a brief news clip (in Spanish) here (skip to 11 min 40 sec). You can also read an article and watch another video highlighting the discovery here. Once again, congratulations to Gabriela, Luis, and the other researchers involved with this project!
Recently, Ichnoplanet master’s student Kaitlin Lindblad has had her fantastic artistic work featured in the Department of Geology at the University of Saskatchewan, focusing on depicting dinosaurs behaving in ways not commonly seen. Aside from her studies, she is a paleoartist who uses digital painting techniques to bring ancient ecosystems to life for the purposes of entertainment, education and outreach, and scientific communication in the literature.
The pieces she has done for the museum include a Tyrannosaurus rex scratching its back on a tree, and a Triceratops aggressing against two Thescalosaurus. She is hard at work creating more pieces for the museum, and our research group! We’re excited for what awesome piece she’ll come up with next.
Read her story in USask News. Listen to her radio interviews with CBC Regina and CBC Saskatoon. Check out Kailtin’s profile here.
This past summer, Jack Milligan represented Ichnoplanet during fieldwork conducted by the Boreal Alberta Dinosaur Project (BADP) at the University of Alberta (UA), and the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum (PJCDM) under the leadership of UA professor Dr. Corwin Sullivan, and USASK adjunct professor and PJCDM curator Dr. Emily Bamforth. Objectives of this fieldwork include collecting fossils from the late Cretaceous Wapiti Formation near the city of Grande Prairie. The Wapiti Formation is rich in fossils, including freshwater invertebrates, small vertebrates, and especially non-avian dinosaurs. The most common dinosaurs in northern Alberta based on the number of occurrences are the hadrosaurs, commonly referred to as the “duck-billed” dinosaurs. These are large herbivorous dinosaurs that have been suggested to travel in large herds in search of new food sources and as a defense against predatory theropod dinosaurs.
During July and August, BADP collected several large, three-toed hadrosaur tracks from various sites across northwestern Alberta. These tracks are isolated natural casts of footprints that infilled the original track and weathered out of situ. Some of these tracks were carried out of the site by hand across rushing rivers much to the chagrin, all be it temporary, by the team. Studying these tracks will allow the BADP team to learn more about the kinds of environments these dinosaurs were walking through and the taphonomy and different preservation of the tracks.
Images provided by Jack Milligan and Emily Bamforth.
During his studies on the subsurface geology and ichnology of the Basal Sandstone Unit and Earlie Formation in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Ph.D. student Andrei Ichaso conducted core analysis of the study area. One of the studied core samples records the tide-influenced marginal-marine shales of the middle Cambrian Earlie Formation (~500 Ma), and also happened to capture something else. The complete body fossil of a trilobite, a Paleozoic marine invertebrate, was caught and preserved within the drill core! The trilobite was identified by a National University of Cordoba Ph.D. student, and former M.Sc. student in the Department of Geological Sciences at USask, Neal Handkamer, as Ehmania weedi. The specimen is around 32 mm long and recovered from a drilling depth of 2.3 km (see figure below, Handkamer et al., 2023).
This discovery marks the first occurrence of a trilobite body fossil of Cambrian age from the province of Saskatchewan. Following this discovery, the trilobite was featured on the front cover of the 2023 Saskatchewan Geoscience Calendar from the Saskatchewan Geological Society! You can read more in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences here.
Congratulations to Andrei on this awesome and remarkable find!
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