Saturday, August 12, 2006
Dig This: Trilobites Made Tunnels
Trilobites, the extinct marine creatures famous to fossil-hunters everywhere, may have once done digging of their own, say British and Swedish researchers.
Rocks found in a Swedish limestone quarry contain the remains of trilobites inside networks of tunnels, which appear to have been sub-surface thoroughfares for the little bug-like critters.
'It's very rare to find a trilobite in a burrow,' said Amherst College paleontologist Whitey Hagadorn, an expert on tracks, burrows and other "trace" fossils that can give important clues to a long-lost species' behavior and environment.
The above is based on the Geology paper "Tunneling trilobites: Habitual infaunalism in an Ordovician carbonate seafloor": Abstract
technorati tags: trilobites, extinct, marine, creatures, hunters, limestone, quarry, rocks, tunnels, burrow, fossils, species
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