SPATIOTEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF THE ICHNOGENUS TEREDOLITES: EVIDENCE OF COMPETITION, SALINITY, AND PALEOENVIRONMENT

The ichnogenus Teredolites is comprised of flask-shaped to long, sinuous borings in woody media produced by Pholadoidean bivalves in Jurassic and younger, marine-influenced sedimentary successions. Teredolites are an engaging topic of research with respect to community ecology, sequence stratigraphy, and petroleum exploration. Teredolites record the ephemeral linkage between the continental and marine realms where they exploit allochthonous media, such as isolated flotsam, or concentrated within media retention zones (woody lags) and are commonly used to demarcate marine-flooding surfaces along in situ exhumed composite woodgrounds. Occurrences of Teredolites are typically investigated at the outcrop to formation level with larger scale analyses lacking from the literature. Recent studies on modern Pholadoideans provide insight on the connectivity of tracemaker communities and biotic interactions in areas of sympatry, which are yet to be synthesized with ichnological concepts. This study provides a large-scale spatiotemporal analysis of Teredolites from the Jurassic – recent to semiquantitatively reconstruct paleosalinity in strata interpreted to be deposited in paralic to shallow marine environments by applying the trends in sizes, distribution, densities, and niche dynamics of modern wood-boring clams in oligohaline to euhaline conditions onto trends seen in the rock record. Objectives of this study are to render: (1) a quantitative understanding of the ichnogenus Teredolites for use in outcrop- to basin-scale analyses; (2) a predictive measure of paleoenvironment and paleosalinity based on occurrence densities and salinity-size relationships at the ichnospecies level; (3) a framework to infer competitive strategies in shallow-water occurrences; and (4) additions to the fossil record of the progenitors.