Helminthopsis tenuis Książkiewicz, 1968

Šamánek, Jaroslav, Vallon, Lothar H., Mikuláš, Radek & Vachek, Michal, 2022, A glimpse into ancient food storage: Sequestrichnia and associated nucleocave Chondrites from Eocene deep-sea deposits, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 67 (3), pp. 767-779 : 769-770

Helminthopsis tenuis Książkiewicz, 1968

Fig. 3 .

Material.—Single large specimen on a sandstone slab, collected from talus (MZM Ge 32946) from Velká nad Veličkou, Czech Republic, Eocene.

Description. —Incomplete specimen of an unbranched, horizontal burrow with a fairly constant diameter of about 10 mm and a somewhat rectangular cross-section. Preserved as convex hyporelief with a passive, structureless fill (no pellets were observed). Burrow segments are rarely straight and often slightly wiggly. Two meanders, one wide and one narrow, are preserved. The broad meander is 120 mm wide and 86.6 mmm high, the narrow one measures 61.3 mm in width and 80 mm in height. The burrow possesses a partially preserved median furrow.

Remarks. — Wetzel and Bromley (1996) interpreted Helminthopsis as feeding burrows constructed in shallow depths of sediments probably rich in benthic food. Although collected from talus, the trace fossil might therefore have been constructed within a layer that was deposited in times of nutrition-rich sedimentation. Thus, it might have been constructed by a shallow tier tracemaker that the producers of sequestrichnia aimed to avoid (cf. Uchman and Wetzel 2016).

Stratigraphic and geographic range. —Ediacaran to Recent Buatois et al. 2014; Kundal et al. 2022); worldwide.

Figures

Fig. 3. Simple horizontal trail Helminthopsis tenuis Książkiewicz, 1968, MZM Ge 32946, from Velká nad Veličkou, Czech Republic, Eocene.