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Supposed Precambrian trace fossils from Jersey, Channel Islands

Correspondence and Notes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

B. H. Bland ,
G. Evans ,
R. Goldring ,
A. E. Mourant F.R.S ,
J. T. Renouf  and
A. D. Squire
B. H. Bland
Affiliation:
61 Hanover Road, Willesden, London, NW10 3DL, U.K.
G. Evans
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, Imperial College of Science and Technology, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 5BP, U.K.
R. Goldring
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Reading, White-knights, Reading, RG6 2AB, U.K.
A. E. Mourant F.R.S
Affiliation:
The Dower House, Maison de Haut, Longueville, St Saviour, Jersey, Channel Islands, U.K.
J. T. Renouf
Affiliation:
States of Jersey Education Department, P.O. Box 142, Highlands, St Saviour, Jersey, Channel Islands, U.K.
A. D. Squire
Affiliation:
19 Devonshire Road, Horsham, West Sussex, RH13 5EF, U.K.
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Abstract

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SIR - Squire (1973) described and figured fossil burrows, ascribed to Sabellarites, from the Upper Proterozoic Brioverian Jersey Shale Formation of Jersey, Channel Islands. The meander-like structures are from calcisiltite beds within a turbiditic sequence and were collected from low intertidal reefs. Re-examination by all of us of one of Squire's specimens (Jersey Museum, La Hougue Bie, SJM C 2026; Squire, 1973, plate 1 a) and more decisive material (SJM C 1002, 5 specimens), collected later from the same reefs by Stéphane Rault, confirms that the structures are attributable to modern polychaetous annelids, almost certainly to Polydora sp., an attribution with which Dr J. D. George (Head, Polychaeta Section, British Museum (Natural History)) concurs. Polydora is associated with a wide range of substrate preference, constructing borings in hard calcareous substrates, pseudoborings on the inside of shells and true burrows in loose sediment. In the Jersey material the irregular, but quite typical, U-form tubes have been formed along open joint planes with slight dissolution of the rock, or along thin calcite-filled veins, also with dissolution of the rock. The joints occur at all angles to the bedding. Very pertinent is the attitude of the tubes, which is principally normal to the rock surface rather than to the bedding. No tubes have been seen on freshly broken surfaces and in no instance has a tube been seen to enter the rock, though there are numerous moulds of pyritic concretions which happen to be of about the same diameter as the width of the tubes. Lithothamnium sp. is patchily distributed over the rock surface and locally penetrates into the joints, showing that they were open.

Type
Correspondence and Notes
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 124 , Issue 2 , March 1987 , pp. 173
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

References

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