Integrative Natural History of the Blue Ridge Province, Part 2: Trace Fossils in the Montalto Quartzite | Michaux State Forest, Pennsylvania, USA
I photographed this already detached chunk of Cambrian-age Montalto Member quartzite just a short distance down the trail from the Pole Steeple summit. The folding knife provides scale.
The long, impressively parallel grooves exposed on the stone's face are examples of an ichnofossil (trace fossil) dubbed Skolithos. Trace fossils reveal something about the behavior of the organisms that made them—rather than their form.
Here, we don't have direct evidence of what the critters that did the digging looked like, but we can surmise they were burrowing into the substrate of an ancient seabottom, as do many benthic animals today.
You'll find the other photos and descriptions of this series in my Integrative Natural History of the Blue Ridge Province album.
Integrative Natural History of the Blue Ridge Province, Part 2: Trace Fossils in the Montalto Quartzite | Michaux State Forest, Pennsylvania, USA
I photographed this already detached chunk of Cambrian-age Montalto Member quartzite just a short distance down the trail from the Pole Steeple summit. The folding knife provides scale.
The long, impressively parallel grooves exposed on the stone's face are examples of an ichnofossil (trace fossil) dubbed Skolithos. Trace fossils reveal something about the behavior of the organisms that made them—rather than their form.
Here, we don't have direct evidence of what the critters that did the digging looked like, but we can surmise they were burrowing into the substrate of an ancient seabottom, as do many benthic animals today.
You'll find the other photos and descriptions of this series in my Integrative Natural History of the Blue Ridge Province album.