PALAIOS; August 2006; v. 21; no. 4;
p. 401-402; DOI: 10.2110/palo.2006.P06-33
© 2006 SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology
The Application of Ichnology to Palaeoenvironmental and Stratigraphic Analysis
| The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
 |
The Application of Ichnology to Palaeoenvironmental and Stratigraphic Analysis
|
|---|
D. McIlroy, ed., 2004, The Geological Society of London Special Publication 228, 490 p. (Hardcover, US $174.24) ISBN: 1-86239-154-8.
Ichnology is one of the most important tools for interpreting depositional environments preserved in the Phanerozoic sedimentary record. Such trace fossils as tracks, trails, burrows, nests, rooting patterns, and borings are the products of organism-substratum interactions. Trace fossils rarely are reworked, and therefore preserve in-situ evidence of organisms that once lived above, at, or below the substratum in aquatic or terrestrial settings. Ichnology, over the last 40 years, has been a rapidly developing, interdisciplinary science that spans paleontology and sedimentology with applications to paleobiology as well as paleoenvironmental and stratigraphic analyses.
The edited volume, The Application of Ichnology to Palaeoenvironmental and Stratigraphic Analysis, is a product of the 2003 Lyell Meeting on this theme. It attempts to provide a recent summary of most themes in ichnology as currently applied, as well as to present some of the developments that have been made in this interdisciplinary science. The purpose of the book is to provide a comprehensive treatment and an analytical view of the ichnology of all depositional environments, as well as its use in biostratigraphic and sequence stratigraphic analyses and the refinement of paleoenvironmental interpretations. This book is also meant for use as an undergraduate textbook and a reference text for ichnologists, sedimentologists, and petroleum geologists.
The book consists of 20 chapters, including an introduction (Chapter 1) and a review of concepts and methods, applications, and frontiers (Chapter 2) by McIlroy. These are followed by a collection of chapters (Chapters 3–20) in no particular order that are a combination of review articles and novel research that discuss methodologies and protocols to improve our understanding of paleoenvironments. Topics covered range from deepwater to shallow-marine trace fossils in ancient environments, stratigraphic distribution of . . . [Full Text of this Article]
STEPHEN T. HASIOTIS1
1 University of Kansas Department of Geology 1475 Jayhawk Blvd. 120 Lindley Hall Lawrence, KS 66049-7613
Copyright © 2006 by the SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology.
