A History of Ideas in Ichnology - Trace Fossils as Indicators of Sedimentary Environments - page 31

ichnological research, that is, the crisis that followed the dismissal of fucoids
( Fig. 5 ). Accordingly, the history of ichnology is paced by discontinuities and
dominant interpretations; although at a narrower temporal scale, the development
of ichnological concepts has an incremental (conservative) evolution.
10.2 Modern Centers of Ichnological Research
A great part of modern-day ichnological schools is best seen in the light of past
historical events. The recent history of ichnology pictures a decline in working
invertebrate ichnologists in many cultural areas, such as Italy, France, and Brit-
ain. While this critical situation is a recent phenomenon in Britain, the Italian
and French decline is a direct by-product of the Age of Reaction. However,
fields such as the ethology of trace fossils, facies analysis, and the study of
arthropod trackways still remain active in these cultural areas. In contrast,
new centers have arisen in Europe, South America, and Asia (e.g., Spain, Brazil,
and China) as a direct consequence of the global impetus of the early modern
era. Likewise, direct transmission of knowledge played an important role in the
development of many ichnological schools, that is, the major part of active
North American researchers was trained by other ichnologists during the golden
age of the 1970s.
10.3 Modern Trends in Ichnology as a Legacy from the Past
Isaac Newton's famous admonition about standing on the shoulders of giants
fits well with present-day ichnology. In fact, modern ichnology expanded
substantially on the achievements of prior stages, which were influencing
and guiding its contemporary trends. For instance, the ethological revolution
of the 1950s established trace fossils as representing fossil behavior, and for
this reason, they are nowadays crucial ingredients of both evolutionary paleo-
ecology and paleobiology. The mentioned assumptions are valid even for
those concepts explained by the impact of individual researchers, such as ich-
nofacies. Obviously, the ichnofacies concept primarily derived from the bril-
liant intuitions of Adolf Seilacher, although it would not exist in the present
form without a set of antecedents such as Nathorst and the Wilhelmshaven
school.
However, the ichnofacies approach is based on the interpretation of individ-
ual morphologies, and for this reason, it is difficult to apply to well cores
( Seilacher, 2007 : 201). Consequently, since the 1980s, some workers have
encouraged consideration of those aspects of the texture that result from biotur-
bation and bioerosion: ichnofabrics ( Bromley and Ekdale, 1986 ; Ekdale et al.,
2012 ). The ichnofabric paradigm appeared to be an excellent methodology for
paleoenvironmental reconstruction, complementary to the ichnofacies approach.
It found particular application in the study of coalfields (i.e., Pollard, 1988 )and
hydrocarbon reservoirs ( Knaust, 2012b; Taylor and Goldring, 1993 ).