Tag: Cambrian

Ichnology of the Ediacaran–Cambrian Chapel Island Formation of Newfoundland, Canada

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Dr. Romain Gougeon, Dr. Gabriela Mángano, Dr. Luis Buatois, Dr. Guy Narbonne, Dr. Brittany Laing, and Dr. Maximiliano Paz have just published their research on bioturbation at the onset of the Cambrian Explosion within the monograph series Fossils and Strata. This is the culmination of 4 field seasons that took place from 2016 to 2021 at the Cambrian-type section in Newfoundland. The monograph consists of a comprehensive ichnotaxonomic review that is essential to understanding the Cambrian explosion from a trace-fossil perspective.

Romain Gougeon and colleagues conducting fieldwork in Newfoundland, Canada. See Fossils and Strata for open access monograph.

The Chapel Island Formation is a 1000+ m-thick, mainly siliciclastic succession that is well-exposed in coastal cliffs of Burin Peninsula, southeastern Newfoundland, eastern Canada. This unit contains an outstanding record of the transition from the Ediacaran (635–538 Ma) to the Cambrian (538–487 Ma). Fossils from the Chapel Island Formation include an incredible diversity of trace fossils, with some intervals rich in small shelly fossils. The monograph integrates sedimentologic and ichnologic information for the whole formation, reinforces the status of the current Cambrian Global Stratotype Section and Point for the Cambrian System, and advocates for the need for more comprehensive and multi-disciplinary approaches and studies to fully decipher the scale, tempo, and loci of the early evolution of animal life on Earth.

Congratulations to Romain and the team on this incredible achievement! You can check out Romans’ ResearchGate profile here, where you can read other studies he’s authored on the Chapel Island Formation throughout the years. These include the origin of the shelf sediment mixed layer and the impact of outcrop quality on trace fossil datasets.

Written by Jack Milligan and Romain Gougeon

Congrats to Dr. Brittany Laing!

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We would love to congratulate Dr. Brittany Laing on her recent successful PhD defence! Her thesis focused on the behavioural evolution and ecological impact of organisms as seen through trace fossils, specifically applying theories and methodologies from mathematics & behavioural biology to trace fossil datasets in order to quantitatively examine behavioural and ecological changes through time. She also completed a master’s degree with our research group where she studied the ichnology at the Ediacaran and Cambrian GSSP in Newfoundland, Canada. She is also to thank for the Ichnoplanet website!

We are forever grateful for your contributions and wish you all the best in your future endeavours!

Written by Jack Milligan

Meet Himatiichnus mangano!

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Recently, an international team of ichnologists led by Katherine A. Turk described a new ichnogenus from the late Ediacaran Huns Member of the Urusis Formation in southern Namibia. They described a series of meandering, intertwining tubes exhibiting dual lineation patterns preserved in convex relief, appearing to disappear into the sediment and reemerge on the sediment surface. The distal terminal ends of the tubes are rounded and bulbous. Modern priapulid worms have produced such structures via peristaltic probing. This is similar to the famous Ediacaran-Cambrian biostratigraphic marker trace fossil Treptichnus pedum, also attributed to priapulid worms.

Figure 2 from Turk et al., 2024 showing the holotype of Himatiichnus mangano. See paper here.

The team also noted that these new trace fossils represented the earliest occurrence of Scalidophora, and are much like those traces of worms in the Cambrian, suggesting ecological interactions typical of the Cambrian Explosion appeared earlier than previously thought (the long fuse hypothesis). The morphological evidence pointed to these trace fossils being a novel ichnogenus and ichnospecies. The team gave the trace fossils the name Himatiichnus mangano, named after our very own Dr. M. Gabriela Mángano!

We couldn’t agree more with this decision, as Dr. Mángano has not only spent her career furthering the field of ichnology from all aspects, but has also contributed greatly to research on the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition around the world. Congrats, Dr. Mangano, on this great honour and achievement!

Get the scientific paper in Royal Society Open Science here.

Written by Jack Milligan

Congratulations to Romain!

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Last week, our own Romain Gougeon successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis! Romain has worked very hard to achieve this milestone, so big congratulations to him! His thesis focused on integrating sedimentologic and ichnologic datasets to learn more about the evolution of early metazoans from the latest Ediacaran and earliest Cambrian Chapel Island Formation of Newfoundland, Canada. During his research, he and his collaborators have published a series of papers on this topic, much of which you can find on his profile, and on our publication page here.

We look forward to hearing more about your future research, and congratulations once again to now Dr. Romain Gougeon!

Romain Gougeon, Luis Buatois, Gabriela Mangano, and Guy Narboone conducting remote fieldwork in Newfoundland, Canada.

Written by Jack Milligan

Trilobite fossil recovered from southwestern Saskatchewan subsurface Earlie Formation core sample

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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!

Written by Jack Milligan