{"id":198,"date":"2021-11-17T10:48:34","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T00:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/?page_id=198"},"modified":"2023-05-30T17:17:15","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T07:47:15","slug":"trace-fossils","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/fossils\/trace-fossils\/","title":{"rendered":"Trace fossils"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Trace fossils<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

Trace fossils (or ‘ichnofossils’) are records of an organism\u2019s behaviour, left behind when that organism interacted with its environment. Trace fossils can include footprints, burrows, bite or feeding traces, or even coprolites, and they often provide information that cannot be gleaned from study of body fossils (skeletons).<\/p>\n

A single organism has the potential to leave behind millions of traces during its lifetime. Study of those traces might tell us how an animal moved, how fast it could run, what it ate, whether it burrowed or climbed, or, rarely, how it interacted with other animals.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s trace fossil record extends all the way back to the Ediacaran (538.8\u2013635 Ma) when the first complex organisms were scraping up algae off the sea floor. A huge diversity of 130-million-year-old dinosaur footprints are preserved near Broome in Western Australia and slightly younger dinosaur tracks are known from southern Victoria (110 Ma) and central Queensland (90\u2013100 Ma).<\/p>\n

More recent trace fossil evidence tells us about the activities of vertebrates in the last five million years of Australia\u2019s history and includes everything from evidence of flamingos in Lake Eyre to how the megafauna walked and even what they ate.[\/vc_column_text][vc_separator][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_empty_space height=”64px”][vc_empty_space height=”128px”][vc_single_image image=”437″ img_size=”large” alignment=”right” style=”vc_box_circle_2″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Explore trace fossils in 3D:<\/h3>\n

Aves – Dromornithidae<\/a><\/h2>\n

Aves \u2013 various<\/a><\/h2>\n

Crocodylidae<\/a><\/h2>\n

Diprotodontidae<\/a><\/h2>\n

Macropodidae <\/a><\/h2>\n

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<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dasyuridae<\/a><\/h2>\n

Thylacinidae<\/a><\/h2>\n

Thylacoleonidae<\/a><\/h2>\n

Vombatidae<\/a><\/h2>\n

[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_empty_space][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text] Trace fossils Trace fossils (or ‘ichnofossils’) are records of an organism\u2019s behaviour, left behind when that organism interacted with its environment. Trace fossils can include footprints, burrows, bite or feeding traces, or even coprolites, and they often provide information that cannot be gleaned from study of body fossils (skeletons). A single organism has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"parent":64,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-198","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/198\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.flinders.edu.au\/vamp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}