Ichnofossils, also known as trace fossils, are geological records of biological activity rather than preserved body parts, encompassing structures such as burrows, tracks, trails, borings, and coprolites. They provide direct evidence of organism behavior, ethology, and organism–substrate interactions, often where body fossils are absent. Ichnofossil analysis underpins ichnology and is used to interpret paleoenvironmental conditions, substrate consistency, energy regimes, and bioturbation intensity. Because ichnofossils are typically preserved in situ, they are critical for refining depositional models, sequence stratigraphy, and basin analysis, and for constraining the distribution, locomotion, and trophic strategies of ancient benthic and nektonic communities.
A new app, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), could help scientists and the public identify dinosaur footprints made millions of years ago, a study reveals.
Biotechnology
Jan 26, 2026
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60
Dr. Rowan Martindale, a paleoecologist and geobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, was walking through the Dadès Valley in the Central High Atlas Mountains of Morocco when she saw something that literally stopped ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 13, 2026
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100
Legend once had it that the huge, three-toed footprints scattered across the central highlands of Bolivia came from supernaturally strong monsters—capable of sinking their claws even into solid stone.
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 26, 2025
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182
Scientists have discovered the single largest dinosaur track site in the world in Carreras Pampa, Torotoro National Park, Bolivia. The tracks were made about 70 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous Period, by theropods—bipedal ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 25, 2025
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232
An international team, involving researchers from the University of Seville, the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences in Granada and the University of Huelva, has identified the first fossilized vertebrate footprints from ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 17, 2025
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206
A wildlife photographer stumbled upon one of the oldest and largest known collections of dinosaur footprints, dating back about 210 million years to the Triassic Period, high in an Italian national park near the 2026 Milan ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 16, 2025
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68
Today, the Arabian Gulf is home to manatee-like marine mammals called dugongs that shape the seafloor as they graze on seagrasses. A newly described fossil site in Qatar reveals that ancient sea cows engineered aquatic ecosystems ...
Ecology
Dec 10, 2025
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147
A fossil site in Bolivia preserves thousands of traces of dinosaurs who walked, ran, and swam along an ancient coastline, according to a study by Raúl Esperante of the Geoscience Research Institute, California, U.S., and ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 3, 2025
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387
Rocks have been found to hold many traces of Earth's ancient history, but usually geologists have to seek them out. Every once in a while, however, these imprints of times past are found by unsuspecting visitors. This occurred ...
South Africa is well known for its fossil heritage, a record of plants and animals that tells us what the world was like long ago.
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 2, 2025
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26
