Gallery of Geology: The trace fossil Ophiomorpha from the Upper Cretaceous Trinidad Sandstone, northeastern New Mexico

Spring 2019, Volume 41, Number 1 New Mexico Geology Many trace makers are also specific to a particular type of habitat, and this specificity provides an important tool in identifying and interpreting ancient environments. One environmentally diagnostic trace fossil is the burrow Ophiomorpha, which indicates littoral to shallow-marine paleoenvironments (Buatois and Mángano, 2011). Thus, Ophiomorpha are found in virtually all of the shallow-marine or shoreline Upper Cretaceous Trace fossils are structures in sedimentary rocks that record the interaction of organisms with sediment. Often thought of as “fossilized behavior,” trace fossils are important archives of the activities of extinct plants and animals. Many trace fossils are also strong indicators of paleoenvironments, an observation that underlies the concept of ichnofacies. This is in part because specific organismal behaviors are often correlated with particular substrates. Gallery of Geology