Hemipelagic and Pelagic Basin Plains - Trace Fossils as Indicators of Sedimentary Environments - page 673

by Fu and Werner (1994, 2000) , Baldwin and McCave (1999) , L¨wemark et al.
(2004) , and Wetzel et al. (2008) . They mainly exhibit a clear relationship
between ichnofabrics and grain size; the effects of the other environmental fac-
tors are not unequivocal. Therefore, a clear ichnological criterion recording the
contourite mode of bioturbation is not yet available.
4. CONCLUSIONS AND PERSPECTIVES
Trace fossils are still underestimated in sedimentological analyses of (hemi)
pelagic sediments. There is still a great gap between deep-sea paleoichnology
and neoichnology. The world of modern endobenthic burrowing animals is only
little known and their interrelationships to the fluctuating environmental factors
are rarely investigated. Multidisciplinary neoichnological research in different
deep-sea environments is needed in order to recognize and identify the trace-
makers, their burrowing and general behavior, and their distribution in relation
to the environmental parameters. The faunal structure in the deep sea and the
factors regulating it are also unknown, including the aspects of patchiness. In
the rock record, it would be worthwhile to study the spatial distribution and lat-
eral continuity of trace fossils and trace-fossil assemblages in detail to gain
additional information.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A. U.'s research benefited financially from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the
Jagiellonian University (DS funds), and the Komitet Bada ´ Naukowych (now Ministry of
Education and High Schools, Poland) as a 2004-2005 research project. A. W.'s research
was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Basel. W.
Miller (Arcata, CA, USA) and the editors carefully reviewed the chapter and made helpful
suggestions. All these contributions are gratefully acknowledged.
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