Trace fossils from the continental Upper Triassic Kågeröd Formation of Bornholm, Denmark

Abstract

The Upper Triassic Kågeröd Formation of Bornholm consists of clays, sandstones and conglomerates of floodplain and fluvial origin, but details of the depositional environment are poorly understood. Trace fossils are described for the first time from the red and green clays (floodplain with lake deposits) and cross-stratified sandstones (fluvial channel deposits) of the Upper Triassic Kågeröd Formation on Bornholm, Denmark. The sparse ichnofauna consists of large, mud-filled shafts and tunnels in caliche-bearing conglomerate, determined as Camborygma and attributed to the burrowing activity of cray fish. The sandstones preservevertical U-shaped burrows passively filled with sand, assigned to Arenicolites and probably produced by insects. Furthermore, they contain winding, horizontal, oblique and vertical unbranched burrows with an active meniscate sand fill, referable to Taenidium and supposedly produced by burrowing beetles. The clays and the sandstones contain numerous caliche nodules of centimetre to decimetre size, some of which contain root traces in the form of rhizoliths. This trace-fossil association reflects deposition on a vast floodplain with shallow lakes and fluvial channels, under semiarid conditions.