Palaeontologia africana
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/13253
ISSN (print): 0078-8554
ISSN (electronic): 2410-4418
For queries regarding content of Palaeontologia africana collections please contact Jonah Choiniere by email : jonah.choiniere@wits.ac.za or Tel : 011 717 6684
Browse
4 results
Search Results
Item Trace fossils in the Ecca of northern Natal and their palaeoenviromental significance(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1975) Hobday, D K; Tavener-Smith, RBecause of the rarity of body fossils in the Ecca Group fossil burrows, tracks and trails are of potential value in supplementing primary sedimentary evidence concerning the palaeoenvironmental factors of bathymetry, energy level and food supply. The three most important ichnogenera are Skolithos, Corophioides and Scolicia. The first two are restricted to the upper portions or Middle Ecca upward-coarsening regressive cycles attributed to delta progradation. They arc representatives of Seilacher's (1967) Skolithos and Glossijungites communities, indicating shallow water conditions with diastems. Scolicia occurs at lower levels in the cycles and corresponds to Seilacher's deeper water Cruziana community. Meandering trails Helminthopsis and Taphrhelminthopsis in the Lower Ecca belong to Seilacher's deep water Nereites community. Less common ichnogenera include the U-burrows Diplocraterion and Rhizocorallium. It has proved impossible positivelv to identify many trace fossils such as short ramifying burrows, chevron trails, dumbbell-shaped surface impressions, digitate tracks and problematic elliptical casts. Trace fossils have not been recognised with certainty in the fluviatile deposits which comprise the bulk or the coal-bearing strata of northern Natal.Item The "trilobite” trackways in the Table Mountain Group (Ordovician) of South Africa(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1975) Anderson, Anne MA terminology for arthropod trackways is defined and the nomenclature of trace fossils is discussed briefly. Most of the trackways from the reddish sandstone Graafwater Formation are assigned to the ichnospecies Petalichnus capensis sp. nov. which includes bilaterally symmetrical walking Irails consisting of a repetition of 9-12 pairs of unifid tracks sometimes accompanied by a median drag line. These trackways are associated with hemispherical burrows Metaichna rustica gen. et sp. nov. The same animals possibly made both the trackways and the burrows, but whether or not they were trilobites is not clear.Item Dinosaur tracks in Triassic Molteno sediments: the earliest evidence of dinosaurs in South Africa?(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1990) Raath, Michael A; Kitching, James W; Shone, Russell W; Rossouw, G JA fossil tracksite containing well-preserved tridactyl footprints of bipedal theropod dinosaurs is reported from fluvial overbank deposits of Molteno age (Stormberg Group: Triassic) in the northeastern Cape Province, South Africa. They occur stratigraphically below the mudrocks of the Elliot Formation, in which dinosaur remains are comparatively common, and are taken to represent the earliest evidence for dinosaurs in South Africa. They also represent the earliest unequivocal evidence of tetrapods in Molteno deposits.Item Fossil vertebrate tracks near Murraysburg, Cape Province(Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, 1990) McRae, Colin SThe presence of a palaeosurface with a set of relatively large concave epirelief tracks that extend for some 60 m is documented and described. The trackmaker is believed to be a member of the genus Aulacephalodon Seeley 1898 or Rhachiocephalus Seeley 1898 and to have walked across a submerged silty surface on a floodplain. A mud veneer deposited under relatively low energy conditions soon after the tracks were made, and the thermal alteration of the sediment by nearby diabase intrusives, contributed to the preservation of this set of fossil tracks.