New Ichnogenera: Arthropod Tracks & Climactichnites Association

This ichnofossil plate is rare/unique from several aspects:

• It was obtained from the oldest strata of the Krukowski quarry to date, some 40 to 100 feet below the madusoid layer; which places it some 1 to 3 three million years older.
• The only ichnofossils or body fossils found here are intrastraddle, that is, they are in between the sandstone bedding planes, as opposed to on them, within clay-laden sediment. The fossils are therefore more subtle, and prone to some distortion.
• It represents the first and only zone where Climatichnites is in association with arthropod trackways; the tracks, in fact, crisscross.
• It contains an entirely new arthropod ichnogenus characterized by closely spaced dimples (see the many pictures below).

It appears that only a few of these will ever become available. Ichnologists may find interesting the "Y-forked" trail. Where the animals traveling the same disrection and diverged, or the opposite direction and converged (see third row of pictures)?

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. Protichnites is now believed to have been made by euthycarcinoids.

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.

Climactichites has remained enigmatic since first described by Sir William Logan in 1860; the inchnogenera 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. 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.

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. (303)