Ichnological advancements in process sedimentology and reservoir development

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Neoichnology is the study of how animals interact with sediments. This includes animal burrowing, walking, and living within sediment. Fossilized tracks and burrows are known either as trace fossils or as ichnofossils. The study of trace fossils is very important, because it has been shown that animals behave differently under various environmental conditions; therefore, fossilized traces help interpret the nature of a depositional environment. This proposal will explore the potential for trace fossils to provide very detailed sedimentary information from the rock record. The goal is to look at trace fossils in sedimentary rocks and infer from those, sedimentation rates, salinity, turbidity, and nature of the food resources available. Although answering all of these questions will be difficult, it is likely that aquaria experiments can help test animal responses to high sedimentation, turbid water, alternating salinity, and fluctuating oxygen. It is further proposed that we observe animal-sediment interactions in modern sedimentary environments to provide more accurate data. It will be required that the models evolved from aquaria and outdoor locales be applied to examples in the rock record to test the viability of infering detailed data from the rock record.