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Taphonomic Signature and the Imprint of Taphonomic History: Discriminating Between Taphofacies of the Inner Continental Shelf and a Microtidal Inlet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2017

George M. Staff  and
Eric N. Powell
George M. Staff
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, Texas A&M University College Station, Texas 77843
Eric N. Powell
Affiliation:
Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University College Station, Texas 77843
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Extract

Although taphonomic processes alter or destroy much of the preservable portion of the original community, many of these processes also imprint valuable paleoecological information about the fauna and the environment of deposition which might be employed in paleoenvironmental reconstruction (Brett and Baird, 1986; Speyer and Brett, 1986, 1988). Accordingly, taphonomic analysis of modern and ancient death assemblages has received much attention recently (Powell et al., in press; Parsons et al., 1988; Kidwell and Behrensmeyer, 1988) and a new concept, that of the taphofacies, has been developed (e.g., Speyer, 1988). Taphofacies are based on distinct suites of taphonomic characteristics, taphonomic signatures, imprinted on the shell material and on its relationship to the sedimentary fabric by mixtures of physical, biological and chemical processes, which potentially are unique for a given environment. Ideally, if unique taphonomic signatures can be identified and the formative processes understood in a wide range of modern environments, this baseline can be employed to make more accurate reconstructions of equivalent paleoenvironments.

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