A History of Ideas in Ichnology - Trace Fossils as Indicators of Sedimentary Environments - page 30

led to pioneering application of trace fossils to sedimentary facies interpretation
and incorporation of neoichnological studies in trace-fossil interpretations (see
works by Hobday, Mason, Shone, Smith, Stanistreet, Rust, and Turner; Supple-
mentary Material: http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780444538130 ).

10. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
10.1 Evolution of the Interpretation of Trace Fossils
The collection of numerous bibliographic resources allows building a database
(Supplementary Material: http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780444538130 ), graph-
ically resulting in a semiquantitative evolutionary tree of ichnology ( Fig. 5 ). This
“tree of ichnology” supports the reliability of the current periodization of the
history of ichnology and shows very well the phases of ferment and stasis in

Trace fossil interpretation

Descriptive
approach

Hierophanic Inorganic Zoological Botanical Ichnological

Year

2000

Modern Era

1950

Development of the
Modern Approach

Period of Reaction

1900

Age of Fucoids

1850

1800

1750

1700

1650

1600

1550

Age of Naturalists

1500

1450

1400

0

-10000

-20000

-30000

FIGURE 5 Tree of ichnology, showing the evolution in the interpretation of trace fossils. Dots
correspond to bibliographic data in the Supplementary Material: http://booksite.elsevier.com/
9780444538130 .