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Taphonomy and an Intertidal Palimpsest Surface: Implications for the Fossil Record

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2017

Ronald R. West ,
Harold B. Rollins  and
Richard M. Busch
Ronald R. West
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506
Harold B. Rollins
Affiliation:
Department of Geology and Planetary Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Richard M. Busch
Affiliation:
Department of Geology and Astronomy, West Chester University, West Chester, PA 19383
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Lateral fluctuations of shoreline positions along shallow basinal margins often result in spatially and temporally overprinted (palimpsested) firmground or hardground surfaces (Frey and Basan, 1981). Recent palimpsested surfaces can teach us a great deal about the fossil record, particularly when we view them taphonomically. For the last few years we have been studying such surfaces along the seaward coast of St. Catherines Island, Georgia. In this paper we will first briefly discuss the modern salt marsh at St. Catherines Island, and its invertebrate inhabitants. This will form a basis for recognition and description of relict marsh surfaces. We will next describe the relict salt marsh surface that is currently being exhumed by coastal erosion and palimpsested by other invertebrate communities. Such palimpsested events also represent heterochronous community replacement–the disjunct temporal and (usually) spatial overprinting of an older community (or biogenic surface) by one (or more) younger communities. This interprets “replacement” as a passive, generally species non-interactive, phenomenon (contra Miller, 1986). Lastly, we will make some rather broad comparisons between the St. Catherines Island setting and what we interpret as analogous situations recorded in the Carboniferous strata of the Appalachian Basin.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Paleontological Society Special Publications , Volume 5: Paleocommunity Temporal Dynamics: The Long-Term Development of Multispecies Assemblies , 1990 , pp. 351 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 Paleontological Society 

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References

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