A History of Ideas in Ichnology - Trace Fossils as Indicators of Sedimentary Environments - page 15

Thanks to the extended summary in French that accompanied his work,
Nathorst provided the impetus for the development of paleoichnology. Throughout
this historical stage, discussion and argument over the nature of fucoids took on
increasing prominence among scientists. In fact, by the late nineteenth century,
French scholars began to mount a sustained attack on the rising paleoichnology
and published voluminous descriptive and taxonomic works (e.g., de Saporta,
1882; Lebesconte, 1883 ). Only in 1886 did Nathorst take part in the discussion
( Cad´e and Goldring, 2007 ). In holding his opinion against such authorities as
Lebesconte and de Saporta, Nathorst showed his sturdy independence of judgment.
7.2 The Period of Reaction: a Worldwide Phenomenon
The Period of Reaction was a worldwide phenomenon, although not all of the
elements of debate appeared everywhere in the same order and with the same
strength. For instance, the reaction against the fucoid interpretation had much less
impact in Britain than on the continent where the extensive fucoid monographs of
Brongniart, Heer, and de Saporta had been published. Nathorst's invertebrate inter-
pretation was readily accepted by several workers, such as Keeping (flysch traces),
Taylor, Smith, Bather (worm trails and burrows), and Beasley, Smith (arthropod
tracks; Supplementary Material: booksite.elsevier.com/9780444538130).
Conversely, the Iberian Peninsula saw one of the strongest advocates of the
fucoid interpretation, the Portuguese geologist Joaquim Nery Delgado. How-
ever, by the early 1900s, Delgado interpreted Cruziana as “crustacean trails”;
Nereites as “annelid trails”; and Skolithos as “worm burrows” (Supplementary
Material: http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780444538130 ). Spanish workers
maintained vague interpretations, due mostly to the controversial explanations
that characterized the Period of Reaction (e.g., Palacios, 1918 ). Within a
recently unified Italy, Federico Sacco published his Notes on Italian Palaeoich-
nology ( Sacco, 1888 ), but geological literature often referred to fucoids. Other
influential studies were performed by Peruzzi, Gabelli, Stoppani, and Gortani
(Supplementary Material: http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780444538130 ) .
During most of the Period of Reaction, the geopolitical scenario of central-
eastern Europe was dominated by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Despite its
multinational nature and the contentious questions concerning language, the
Austrian-Hungarian Empire contributed to spread the use of German, which
rapidly became one of the most important languages of science and scholarship
( Ammon, 1998 ). As Chew (2009) argued, in many disciplines, knowledge
of German became a basic requirement up to 1945. In this context, Austrian
geologist Theodor Fuchs added valid arguments in deciphering the true nature
of fucoids as burrows, although this view was controversial for a long
time (Supplementary Material: http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780444538130 ) .
Fuchs (1895) introduced also the first classification of trace fossils, based on
flysch trace fossils. He distinguished three family groups: