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Minerals
Special Issues
Geochemical Archives in Trace Fossils
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Geochemical Archives in Trace Fossils

A special issue of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). This special issue belongs to the section "Biomineralization and Biominerals".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2022) | Viewed by 5748

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Živilė Žigaitė-Moro

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, 75236 Uppsala, Sweden
Interests: fossil biominerals; stable isotopes; trace and rare earth elements; palaeobiology; palaeoenvironment

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Geochemical archives in trace fossils offer unique, yet largely unexplored, potential for palaeobiology and palaeoenvironmental studies. Trace fossils, also known as ichnofossils, represent fossilised traces of organisms’ activity—in contrast to biomineralised fossil parts of the organism itself. Bromalites are most significant when considering extraction of geochemical proxies: they represent fossilised remains of the digestive system activity, and include regurgitates, coprolites, cololites and gastrolites. Stable isotope ratios, elemental compositions and organic biomarkers in bromalites may serve as irreplaceable proxies to a producer’s diet, behavior and other trophic factors, and provide important evidence concerning ancient food webs and palaeoecology. Some may equally retain information about a producer’s ambient environment, migration, as well help analyse early burial conditions, taphonomy and diagenetic history of trace fossils.

This Special Issue is dedicated to new insights, techniques and methods exploring both organic and inorganic geochemical archives in trace fossils. Multidisciplinary contributions are particularly welcome.

Dr. Živilė Žigaitė-Moro
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • trace fossils
  • biogeochemistry
  • trace elements
  • rare earth elements
  • organic biomarkers
  • taphonomy
  • diagenesis
  • paleoenvironment
  • palaeobiology

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

32 pages, 18344 KiB  
Article
Mineralogy of Miocene Petrified Wood from Central Washington State, USA
by George E. Mustoe and Thomas A. Dillhoff
Minerals 2022, 12(2), 131; https://doi.org/10.3390/min12020131 - 23 Jan 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5488
Abstract
Silicified wood occurs abundantly in Middle Miocene flows and sedimentary interbeds of the Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) in central Washington State, USA. These fossil localities are well-dated based on radiometric ages determined for the host lava. Paleoenvironments include wood transported by lahars [...] Read more.
Silicified wood occurs abundantly in Middle Miocene flows and sedimentary interbeds of the Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG) in central Washington State, USA. These fossil localities are well-dated based on radiometric ages determined for the host lava. Paleoenvironments include wood transported by lahars (Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park), fluvial and palludal environments (Saddle Mountain and Yakima Canyon fossil localities), and standing forests engulfed by advancing lava (Yakima Ridge fossil forest). At all of these localities, the mineralogy of fossil wood is diverse, with silica minerals that include opal-A, opal-CT, chalcedony, and macrocrystalline quartz. Some specimens are composed of only a single form of silica; more commonly, specimens contain multiple phases. Opal-A and Opal-CT often coexist. Some woods are mineralized only with chalcedony; however, chalcedony and macrocrystalline quartz are common as minor constituents in opal wood. In these specimens, crystalline silica filling fractures, rot pockets, and cell lumen may occur. These occurrences are evidence that silicification occurred as a sequential process, where changes in the geochemical environment or anatomical structures affected the precipitation of silica. Fossilization typically began with precipitation of amorphous silica within cell walls, leaving cell lumen and conductive vessels open. Diagenetic transformation of opal-A to opal-CT in fossil wood has long been a widely accepted hypothesis; however, in opaline CRBG specimens, the two silica polymorphs usually appear to have formed independently, e.g., woods in which cell walls are mineralized with opal-A but in which lumen contain opal-CT. Similarly, opal-CT has been inferred to sometimes transform to chalcedony; however, in CRBG, these mixed assemblages commonly resulted from multiple mineralization episodes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geochemical Archives in Trace Fossils)
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