Teichichnus

Teichichnus is an ichnogenus with a distinctive form produced by the stacking of thin 'tongues' of sediment, atop one another. They are believed to be fodinichnia, with the organism adopting the habit of retracing the same route through varying heights of the sediment, which would allow it to avoid going over the same area. These 'tongues' are often quite sinuous, reflecting perhaps a more nutrient-poor environment in which the feeding animals had to cover a greater area of sediment, in order to acquire sufficient nourishment. Teichichnus is recognized as a series of tightly packed, concave-up or down laminae, and lacks an outside border or lining, which distinguishes Teichichnus from the Diplocraterion ichnogenus. Teichichnus has 18 named species, of which 4 are valid.

A picture published with the record for Teichichnus. What it shows has not been checked.

Uncredited · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
IchnofossilsPBDB

Time the record covers

At least 515 million years on record.

The record covers at least 521 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 538.8 Mya to 3.6 Mya.

Cambrian — about 17 of 32 occurrencesCambrianOrdovician — about 6 of 32 occurrencesSilurian — about 0 of 32 occurrencesDevonian — about 2 of 32 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 1 of 32 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 0 of 32 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 32 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 32 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 32 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 0 of 32 occurrencesMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 32 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 2 of 32 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 2 of 32 occurrencesLate Cretaceous — about 1 of 32 occurrencesPaleocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesOligocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesMiocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesPliocene — about 1 of 32 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 32 occurrences550–531 Mya — about 2 occurrences531–513 Mya — about 12 occurrences513–495 Mya — about 3 occurrences495–476 Mya — about 1 occurrence476–458 Mya — about 4 occurrences458–440 Mya — about 1 occurrence385–366 Mya — about 1 occurrence366–348 Mya — about 1 occurrence311–293 Mya — about 1 occurrence165–147 Mya — about 1 occurrence147–128 Mya — about 2 occurrences128–110 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences110–92 Mya — about 1 occurrence92–73 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences73–55 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences18–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence521 Mya5.333 Mya550 Mya0 Mya

32 occurrences of Teichichnus on record, most of them in the Cambrian. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

32 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

21 formations

Laeso — 55.00°N, 15.07°EMickwitzia Sandstone — 58.60°N, 13.35°EMickwitzia Sandstone — 58.62°N, 13.43°EOcieseki Sandstone — 50.90°N, 20.90°EKap Leslie — 70.48°N, 21.97°WBedford Shale — 41.59°N, 81.57°WFile Haidar — 58.62°N, 13.77°EElephant Canyon — 38.50°N, 109.67°WRodanas — 41.70°N, 1.55°WCurrier — 49.70°N, 126.62°WBreivik — 70.58°N, 28.18°EJince — 49.78°N, 13.97°ENeptune Glacier — 71.75°S, 68.50°WWulongqing — 24.93°N, 102.82°EBeach — 47.62°N, 52.94°WGrebes Nest Point — 47.64°N, 52.98°WRedmans — 47.66°N, 52.93°WOchre Cove — 47.66°N, 52.94°WTaddrist — 30.64°N, 5.11°WBråstad Shale — 60.73°N, 10.34°EDinosaur Park — 50.68°N, 108.09°WMartinsburg — 41.74°N, 74.18°W

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The named rock units Teichichnus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Teichichnus and its relatives

Cambrian

Where Teichichnus and its relatives were recorded in the Cambrian.

Found in the same rock

291 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 21 sites for Teichichnus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

19 references

Each of the 32 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 7 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Teichichnus

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Commercial use
the licence does not allow it

MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itIchnofossils through timeFormations of the CambrianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Seilacher 1955