Climactichites
has remained enigmatic since first described by Sir William Logan
in 1860. See the Cambrian
Shadows theme park to learn more about this Cambrian mystery
fossil, and what type of animal might have made it. The fossil trackway
is famous enough that a huge eight-foot tall cast of Climactichnites
greets visitors as they enter the earth history wing of Natural
History Museum (Smithsonian)
in Washington, D.C.
This
unique Cambrian inchnofossil comes out of a sensational sandstone
formation in Central Wisconsin that was once a tidal beach. This
quarry has been producing some intriguing trace or ichnofossils,
including huge madusae,
tentacled jellyfish, Diplichnites,
Protichnites,
and the Climactichnites
you see here, among others.
The
depositional environment in this quarry varies from very shallow
marine to aerial. This is very significant as the ichnofossils from
this locality may be the earliest evidence of large organisms and
carnivores abandoning their marine habitat to utilize the terrestrial
environment. If verified to be Middle Cambrian, these ichnofossil
may pre-date the Cambrian-Ordovician trackways from Canada just
described in the May 2002 issue of Geology.
Climachtichnites
has been described as looking like the track of a motorcycle that
drove across rippled sand. The depositional environment in this
quarry varies from very shallow marine to aerial. This is very significant
as the ichnofossils from this locality may be the earliest evidence
of large organisms and carnivores abandoning their marine habitat
to utilize the terrestrial environment. If verified to be Middle
Cambrian, these ichnofossil may pre-date the Cambrian-Ordovician
trackways from Canada described in the May 2002 issue of Geology.
Made
of very dense sandstone, most specimens are large and very heavy.
This specimen has been cut down to be of tractable size. Here is
a chance to obtain famous paleotological anomaly that is relatively
diminutive in size and price. |