Petroxestes

Petroxestes pera borings in an Upper Ordovician hardground (Whitewater Formation, southern Ohio).

Petroxestes is a shallow, elongate boring (a type of trace fossil) originally found excavated in carbonate skeletons and hardgrounds of the Upper Ordovician of North America (Wilson and Palmer, 1988, 2006). These Ordovician borings were likely made by the mytilacean bivalve Corallidomus as it ground a shallow groove in the substrate to maintain its feeding position (Pojeta and Palmer, 1976). They are thus the earliest known bivalve borings (Taylor and Wilson, 2003). Petroxestes was later described from the Lower Silurian of Anticosti Island (Canada) by Tapanila and Copper (2002) and the Miocene of the Caribbean by Pickerill et al. (2001).

References

• Pickerill, R.D., Donovan, S.K., Portell, R.W. (2001). "The bioerosional ichnofossil Petroxestes pera Wilson and Palmer from the Middle Miocene of Carriacou, Lesser Antilles". Caribbean Journal of Science 37: 130–131.
• Pojeta, J., Jr., Palmer, T.J. (1976). "The origin of rock boring in mytilacean pelecypods". Alcheringa 1: 167–179. doi:10.1080/03115517608619068.
• Tapanila, L., Copper, P. (2002). "Endolithic trace fossils in Ordovician-Silurian corals and stromatoporoids, Anticosti Island, eastern Canada". Acta Geologica Hispanica 37: 15–20.
• Taylor, P.D., Wilson. M.A. (2003). "Palaeoecology and evolution of marine hard substrate communities". Earth-Science Reviews 62: 1–103. doi:10.1016/S0012-8252(02)00131-9.
• Wilson, M.A., Palmer, T.J. (1988). "Nomenclature of a bivalve boring from the Upper Ordovician of the midwestern United States". Journal of Paleontology 62: 306–308.
• Wilson, M.A., Palmer, T.J. (2006). "Patterns and processes in the Ordovician Bioerosion Revolution". Ichnos 13: 109–112. doi:10.1080/10420940600850505.

External links

• Bioerosion Website at The College of Wooster
• Comprehensive bioerosion bibliography