What are Trace Fossils? | A New Way to Museum

Summary

In this educational video, Dr. Rhys Barrick from the Sternberg Museum introduces trace fossils, which are remnants of ancient life forms' activities rather than their physical remains. He explores various types, including footprints, burrows, and coprolites (fossilized feces), each revealing insights into prehistoric creatures' behaviors and environments. Dr. Barrick also discusses gastroliths, stomach stones used by marine reptiles, and borings made by shipworms and predatory moon snails. The video is a fascinating exploration of how trace fossils contribute to our understanding of the past.

Takeaways

• 🐾 Trace fossils are remnants of the activities of ancient animals and plants that are preserved in the fossil record, even when the organisms themselves are not.
• 👣 Common types of trace fossils include footprints and tracks, which can provide insights into the types of animals present in a particular ecosystem and their behaviors.
• 🐛 Tracks and trails of invertebrates, such as worm burrows, can reveal information about the environment, including oxygen levels and sedimentation rates.
• 💩 Coprolites, or fossilized feces, can offer evidence of an animal's diet and are more likely to be preserved if they contain bone material or other hard parts.
• 🌊 Gastroliths are stomach stones that some marine animals swallowed to help grind food or for ballast to control buoyancy, and their presence can indicate the animal's feeding and habitat behaviors.
• 🕳️ Borings are holes made by organisms, such as shipworms in wood, and can provide clues about the types of organisms that lived in a particular environment.
• 🐚 Predation evidence, like holes in shells made by moon snails, can show the interactions between predator and prey species and the defensive adaptations of prey.
• 🔍 Trace fossils are valuable for understanding the environment and behaviors of prehistoric life, even when body fossils are scarce or absent.
• 👨‍🏫 Dr. Rhys Barrick from the Sternberg Museum of Natural History highlights the educational importance of trace fossils in understanding the past.
• 🌟 The video encourages viewers to engage with the content by liking, subscribing, and supporting the museum's educational efforts for more fascinating discoveries.

Q & A

What are trace fossils according to Dr. Rhys Barrick?

Trace fossils are traces of animals and plants that lived long ago, where the organisms themselves weren't preserved in the fossil record, but remnants of their activities and lifestyles are.

Why are footprints considered trace fossils?

Footprints are considered trace fossils because they are impressions left by animals that can become hardened into rock, providing a trace of the animal's foot which helps in identifying the type of animal.

How can footprints provide information about an ancient ecosystem?

Footprints can indicate the number of different types of animals present in an ecosystem, and by analyzing the size and spacing of footprints, one can infer the animal's size, gait (walking or running), and potentially its behavior.

What is another common type of trace fossil besides footprints?

Another common type of trace fossil includes tracks and trails of invertebrates, which can be seen as tubes or burrows in the sediment, indicating the movement and activities of organisms like worms.

How do burrows and trails of invertebrates inform us about the environment?

Burrows and trails can reveal the oxygen levels in the environment, as deep burrows suggest a high oxygen environment. They can also indicate the presence of predators, the energy levels in the ecosystem, and sediment deposition rates.

What is a coprolite and how can it provide information about an animal's diet?

A coprolite is fossilized feces, which can provide insights into an animal's diet. The presence of bone material or plant remains like seeds within coprolites can help identify what the animal was consuming.

Why are gastroliths significant in the fossil record?

Gastroliths, or stomach stones, are significant because they indicate that certain marine animals, like plesiosaurs, used them to grind food or for ballast to control buoyancy, providing information about their feeding and swimming behaviors.

What are borings in the context of trace fossils?

Borings are holes or tunnels made by organisms, such as shipworms boring into wood, which are preserved in the fossil record. They provide evidence of predation, shelter construction, and the ecological roles of the organisms that created them.

How can the study of trace fossils contribute to our understanding of ancient environments?

The study of trace fossils can contribute to our understanding of ancient environments by revealing details about the behavior of organisms, the oxygen levels, the presence of predators and prey, and the overall energy and sedimentation dynamics of the ecosystem.

What is the significance of finding a track of a camel in the fossil record as mentioned by Dr. Barrick?

Finding a track of a camel in the fossil record is significant because it provides a direct trace of an animal's presence in the past, which can help in understanding the types of animals that inhabited certain areas and the environments they lived in.

Outlines

00:00

🐾 Trace Fossils: Footprints and Tracks

Dr. Rhys Barrick introduces trace fossils, emphasizing their importance as evidence of past life forms. He explains that trace fossils are the preserved traces of animals and plants, such as footprints and burrows, rather than the organisms themselves. Footprints, for instance, can provide insights into the types of animals present in an ecosystem, their size, and even their behavior, such as whether they were walking or running. Dr. Barrick also discusses how impressions can become hardened into rock, creating positive or negative footprint impressions. These traces are not just cool relics but are also valuable for understanding ancient environments and the interactions between different species.

05:00

🐛 Invertebrate Traces and Fossil Poop

This segment delves into the fascinating world of invertebrate trace fossils, such as worm burrows preserved in rock. These traces reveal much about the environment in which they lived, including oxygen levels and sedimentation rates. The discussion also turns to coprolites, or fossilized feces, which can offer clues about an animal's diet. For example, the presence of bone fragments or grass seeds in coprolites can help scientists determine what an ancient animal consumed. Additionally, gastroliths, or stomach stones, are highlighted as another type of trace fossil. These stones were swallowed by marine animals like plesiosaurs to help grind food or for ballast, and their presence can indicate an animal's feeding habits and habitat.

10:03

🌊 Marine Trace Fossils: Borings and Predation Evidence

The final paragraph explores marine trace fossils, focusing on borings made by organisms like shipworms. These borings, preserved in wood, provide evidence of the shipworms' protective and feeding behaviors. The discussion also includes evidence of predation, such as holes in clam shells made by moon snails. These holes not only indicate the predatory behavior of the moon snails but also offer a glimpse into the evolutionary arms race between predators and their prey, as seen in the development of defensive mechanisms in clams. The paragraph concludes with an invitation to join the Sternberg Museum of Natural History for more such fascinating insights into the natural world.

Keywords

💡Trace fossils

Trace fossils refer to the preserved evidence of the activities of ancient organisms, such as footprints, burrows, and trails, rather than the organisms themselves. In the video, Dr. Rhys Barrick discusses trace fossils as a significant way to understand the behavior and environment of prehistoric life. For instance, he mentions camel footprints as a common type of trace fossil that can provide insights into the types of animals present in a particular ecosystem.

💡Footprints

Footprints are a type of trace fossil that represent the imprints left by animals as they moved across soft sediment. They are valuable for paleontologists as they can indicate the presence of certain species and provide clues about their locomotion patterns. Dr. Barrick uses the example of camel tracks to illustrate how footprints can be preserved in rock and offer insights into the animal's size and behavior.

💡Invertebrates

Invertebrates are animals without a backbone or spinal column, and they include a vast array of species such as worms, insects, and mollusks. The video discusses how trace fossils of invertebrates, like worm burrows, can reveal information about their behavior and the environment they lived in. These burrows can indicate feeding habits, protection from predators, and even environmental conditions like oxygen levels in the ocean.

💡Coprolites

Coprolites are fossilized feces, which can provide valuable information about an animal's diet. In the script, Dr. Barrick mentions that coprolites can contain preserved material like bone fragments or plant matter, allowing scientists to deduce what the animal was eating. He gives an example of a coprolite from a rhinoceros, where fossilized grass seeds were found, indicating the plant-based diet of the animal.

💡Gastroliths

Gastroliths are stones that some animals swallow to help grind food in their digestive systems, similar to how a gizzard works in birds. In the video, Dr. Barrick explains that these stones can become trace fossils when they are found in unexpected locations, indicating that they were swallowed by marine reptiles like plesiosaurs to aid in digestion or for ballast to control buoyancy.

💡Boring

Boring refers to the holes or tunnels made by organisms, such as shipworms, into hard substrates like wood or shells. These trace fossils are significant as they can reveal predation behaviors and the ecological relationships between different species. Dr. Barrick describes how shipworms bored into driftwood, creating a safe habitat and a means to filter feed from the water.

💡Predation

Predation is the act of one organism hunting and consuming another. The video script mentions predation through the example of moon snails, which bore into the shells of clams to access the soft tissue inside. This behavior leaves a trace fossil in the form of a hole in the shell, which can be studied to understand the predator-prey dynamics in ancient ecosystems.

💡Paleoenvironment

The paleoenvironment refers to the ancient environment in which organisms lived. Trace fossils, as discussed in the video, can provide clues about the paleoenvironment, such as the presence of oxygen in the water, the amount of sediment being deposited, and the depth of the water. These insights are crucial for reconstructing the habitats and conditions of the past.

💡Sternberg Museum of Natural History

The Sternberg Museum of Natural History is the setting for the video and is likely where the fossils and specimens discussed are housed. The museum plays a crucial role in preserving and studying trace fossils, contributing to our understanding of ancient life. The mention of the museum in the script highlights the importance of such institutions in the field of paleontology.

💡Fossilization

Fossilization is the process by which the remains or traces of ancient organisms are preserved in rock layers. The video script discusses various types of trace fossils, which are a subset of fossilization where the actual body of the organism is not preserved, but rather evidence of its activity. Understanding the process of fossilization is key to interpreting the information contained within trace fossils.

Highlights

Introduction to trace fossils, which are traces of animals and plants from the past that are preserved in the fossil record.

Footprints and tracks as common types of trace fossils, providing insights into the types of animals present in ancient ecosystems.

The significance of footprints in determining the stride length and behavior of ancient animals, such as whether they were walking or running.

Trace fossils of invertebrates, like worm burrows, which reveal information about the environment and the behavior of these organisms.

The use of burrow traces to infer oxygen levels and sedimentation rates in ancient oceans.

Coprolites, or fossilized feces, as a source of information about the diet of ancient animals.

The preservation of gastroliths, stomach stones used by marine reptiles like plesiosaurs to aid digestion and maintain buoyancy.

Boring traces in wood and shells, indicating the presence of shipworms and predation by moon snails.

The ecological implications of trace fossils, such as the relationship between predator and prey in ancient marine environments.

The educational value of trace fossils in understanding the behavior and environment of prehistoric life.

The rarity and significance of well-preserved trace fossils, such as those found in the Sternberg Museum.

The importance of trace fossils in reconstructing ancient ecosystems and the interactions between different species.

The role of trace fossils in paleontological research and the stories they tell about the past.

The Sternberg Museum's contribution to the study and display of trace fossils, enhancing public understanding of paleontology.

Encouragement for viewers to engage with the content, like, subscribe, and support the museum's educational efforts.

Transcripts

hello everybody i'm dr rhys barrick

and welcome to a new way to museum i'm

here at the sternberg

and i decided to come talk to you a

little bit about some of my favorite

types of fossils

which are really cool and those are

trace fossils

what are trace fossils trace fossils are

simply

traces of animals and plants that

lived long ago but the animals or plants

themselves weren't preserved in the

fossil record

but just remnants of traces of

what they were doing and how they were

living are preserved

so a lot of you probably have some ideas

of what trace fossils might be

probably the most common type of trace

fossil that people think about

on a regular basis are things like this

this is a footprint

right so a track this happens to be a

track of a camel

which is kind of cool now footprints and

traces like that can come in a couple of

kinds sometimes

when you step into the ground you leave

an impression

and that impression can come become

hardened into the rock

and leave a footprint so that's pretty

cool so now you have a trace of the

animal you got a trace of their foot

which helps you identify what type of

animal it is

lots of people today look at all kinds

of footprints and tracks and trails of

modern animals to figure out if there

are raccoons or wolves or cats

running around in the woods in the mud

but we can find these in the fossil

record

and so sometimes they're imprints this

way and sometimes the imprint will fill

up

and you will pop it out and you get

this positive impression of a footprint

footprints are cool

because they give you an idea of the

number of different types of animals

that might be running around

in a mud flat or a certain ecosystem

which is pretty cool they can also tell

you a lot if you know what kind of

animal made the footprint

and how big it is it can sort of tell

you how tall it was

and once you can do that you can

actually measure how far away

each footprint is from each other so if

you have

a whole track way of footprints you can

figure out

how far stride was and if you know that

you can figure out

was that animal walking or running so

footprints are kind of useful for all

sorts of things other than just

cool it's a footprint of an animal

so one very common type

of trace what are the kinds of trace

fossils are there

well another common type of trace fossil

are simply

tracks and trails of invertebrates

so this is kind of a cool rock and you

can see on here there's all these little

long lines and looks like little tubes

on top of the surface well that's what

they are they're

tubes of worms and things that were

burrowing through

the sediment and there's

different shapes and sizes of

tubes of invertebrates crawling through

the mud

generally in the ocean and they can tell

us a whole lot

about what life was like even though

there's no actual

body fossils tracks and trails could be

burrows that are deep into the sediment

which can

tell us things like were they

burrowing for food were they burrowing

for hiding

and protection so predators couldn't

find them

were they just moving around from place

to place

and other things that are kind of cool

about these sorts of trace fossils

is they can tell you a whole lot about

the environment

you don't get really deep burrows unless

you have lots of oxygen

at the bottom of the ocean so if you

have only really shallow burrows it

might be a low oxygen environment

so you can also tell a lot of times

how much energy there was you know were

there lots of waves was there a lot of

sediment being deposited

some animals might make a burrow that's

kind of vertical

and they might leave little poops around

the edges of their

burrow to hold it together so they can

burrow really deeply

so that

they can essentially go down to eat

and have a place to live and not get

they can be vertical so they can always

get to the surface and not be buried by

too much sand

so all kinds of cool traces by

invertebrates

and some of them are very

sort of indistinct but you just see

changes in color in the rock and that

just tells you that there are lots and

lots of different

organisms that are just turning up the

sediment sometimes the sediment gets so

turned up because there's so many

organisms burrowing around

that there's not much to see so it's a

kind of a cool thing to figure out

maybe how deep you were in the water how

much sediment there was how much oxygen

there was

all you can figure out by just evidence

of

animals that were living in the sand

other types of cool trace fossils

well one of them that is always fun

especially for the kids

are things like this

that's kind of a cool shape

and it looks like probably what you

think it looks like

it's actually a coprolite coprolite's

just fossil poop

fossil poop is pretty interesting

because

you know you had something that was

eating and guess what this is like the

book we

read when you were a little kid

everybody poops well guess what

everybody has always pooped

and so often times coprolites don't get

preserved because

they're just poop that settles to the

bottom

of a river or a lake or out on the land

and they get broken down by bacteria and

things so

they're not often preserved in the

fossil record

but they come in several sorts of cool

shapes

and very often they look pretty much

like poop

most coprolites come from things that

were carnivores

because carnivores are eating things

that have bone in them they dissolve the

phosphate which helps

to preserve the fossil poop

and occasionally in fossil poop and

coprolites

you'll find little bits of bone material

so you can actually figure out

what the animal that left the coprolite

was actually eating

which is kind of cool but not all

coprolites come from

carnivores

some fossil poop comes from herbivores

or animals that ate plants

and they don't look like much because if

you look think about a cow or a horse

they plop out a patty so they're much

more indistinct

and they're also pretty rare to preserve

in the fossil record

this one is a special one that came from

some rhinos

and what's really cool about them if you

look in here all this white bits

those are actually fossil grass seeds

so we actually have evidence of

all the different grass seeds and we can

figure out what grasses this particular

animal

in this case a fossil rhino called

teleoceras

what it was actually eating so there's a

lot of evidence of diet

that you can find when you have

coprolites

pretty darn cool and because it's a rock

i don't really have to wash my hands

right now which is

you know another benefit another thing

that goes into an animal's gullet that

we sometimes find in the fossil record

and that are these very smooth

rounded stones what's interesting about

these stones

is they're basically shirt nodules

and they're found in these guys are

found were found

out in the middle of carbonate rocks

chalks where you would not find these

perfectly rounded stones they're not

there's no river nearby

so how did they get there well these

guys are called

gastroliths gastro means stomach lift

means stone

so they're stomach stones so certain

marine animals

like in this case plesiosaurs would eat

a bunch of

these rocks swallow them and they would

stay sort of in their gizzard kind of

like a chicken

and they would help grind up food or in

some cases

give them some ballast so that would

help keep them down in the water column

so they wouldn't automatically float to

the surface

so when you find these outliers of very

smooth

rounded stones they're oftentimes

gastroliths which is really cool

all right so other kinds of trace

fossils

are not just burrows and poop and

footprint traces but also borings and

they're anything but boring borings come

in all kinds of

sort of shapes this is one of my

favorites

and you see all of these

little rounded areas and you see some

cool little areas here

which is what was actually wood this was

a piece of driftwood

floating around in the ocean and what

happens

is that this is from the cretaceous from

the

our western interior seaway and whenever

there's wood in the ocean

there's oftentimes ship worms right

there were no ships but there's lots of

driftwood

and shift shipworms would bore into the

wood

and each one of these is a boring that

was filled up with sediment

that represented an individual shipworm

which is

a bivalve and they would bore into the

wood

and they would live there safe from

anything that was trying to eat them

and they'd be floating through the water

so that they'd have a chance to

filter food out from the ocean there's

just barely a little bit of wood left

sometimes

you find absolutely no wood left but you

can tell

by the shapes of these borings that

it is a trace fossil called pteridolides

territo is the name of the shipworm

so that's kind of a cool boring other

cool borings

come give up other kinds of cool

evidence

of things that are going on and so

here's an evidence of predation

predation means something's being eaten

this is a cool little uh

by valve shell clam shell you see

there's a cute little hole in it

well that cute little hole was put there

by this nasty little moon snail

this moon snail is called a neticide and

they're very carnivorous

and what these moon snails do is they

have a foot that comes out from

underneath them

like this and they wrap around

a nice little clam shell and

they use acid in their stomach to sort

of etch out

the shell and then they have a thing

called a radula

that scrapes and scrapes and bores into

a hole into the shell

and once they get the hole in the shell

they dump a whole bunch of stomach

juices and acids to dissolve the poor

little clam

and eat it and what's cool about

these snails

is they eat all kinds of things they've

got clams that look like this

clams here and they might also even

eat other snails so here's a nice snail

shell

with a perfect little hole of where it

was

eaten by the cool moon snail what's neat

about this

is you have a whole preservation of

shells in a shell bed

you can get a ratio of how many animals

were actually eaten by moon snails

and which types of animals did they like

to eat the best

snails clams

different sorts of clams you can also

see that

the moon's nails would burrow and

different parts are bore into different

parts of the shell

might be in the front part of the shell

might be in the far back part of the

shell

and then there would become a race

between the snails and the clams

to figure out what kinds of defenses

different species of clams would have

in order to keep from being bored into

so they wouldn't be predated on

by these snails so or the snails would

get to be

really really thick shells which would

make it harder

for the poor snail to bore all the way

through this

the shell before it maybe got eaten

or it gave up or got bored and bored

and tired so borings

very cool places to live or a way to get

food

so trace fossils awesome fossils can

tell you

all about the environment and the

animals

that really weren't there or that really

were there but they're not there anymore

so very cool and thank you for joining

us for

a new way to museum thanks for joining

us in a new way to museum with the

sternberg museum of natural history

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