COW PIES, GOAT TONGUES, BULL TAILS AND OTHER PENNSYLVANIAN (VIRGILIAN) DELICACIES FROM THE NEAL TRACE FOSSIL LOCALITY IN SOUTHEASTERN KANSAS

Along an unnamed tributary of Walnut Creek near the City of Neal, southeastern Kansas, several generations of landowners have collected and colorfully named to a surprising assemblage of trace fossils weathering from the Late Pennsylvanian Stull Shale member of the Kanwaka Shale (Shawnee Group) The Stull Shale is a medium- to dark-gray silty shale, though most of the ichnofossils are cast in positive hyporelief at the base of a laterally discontinuous, up to 5-cm-thick reddish-brown very fine-grained sandstone, which is almost completely absent except where filling the ichna. The traces are fodinichnia and domichnia made by vagile to hemisessile deposit feeding organisms and most are previously documented in the Stull Shale and elsewhere. Ichnofossils present include such actively and passively filled fodinichnia as Asterosoma radiciforme, Chondrites isp., very small Diplocraterion isp., Lockeia siliquaria, Planolites isp., and two Rhizocorallium morphologies. Such passively filled domichnia as Palaeophycus tubularis, Pentichnus gugelhupf, and Skolithos isp. also present. Most of these are common constituents of the Cruziana ichnofacies suggesting a predominantly low energy, distal lower shoreface marine environment. Surprisingly, the locality also contains abundant specimens of two large-scale and previously undescribed ichnofossils. The first are passively filled cylindrical burrows, 35–48 mm in diameter and ~80 mm long, that are consistently inclined 20º–35º from the bedding plane. Dorsal sides are generally smooth walled while the ventral sides superficially resemble Ophiomorpha-like pelletoids, but are most likely sand-filled cavities plucked from the shale floor from the burrow. The other large and novel ichnofossils superficially resemble, and are similar in sized to, a hand of bananas. These consists of compound, U-shaped burrows plunging as much as 100 mm deep and composed of multiple, closely spaced and coalescing, up to 35 mm-wide tubes. Most individual tubes run parallel with each other, though at differing depths and often cross-cutting each other. All surfaces are ornamented with numerous crisscrossing striations subparallel to the long axis of the burrows. Both of the new ichna are interpreted as the feeding or dwelling burrows of decapod crustaceans.