Trace Fossil Classification
Trace fossils are classified in various ways for different purposes. Traces can be classified taxonomically (by morphology), ethologically (by behavior), and toponomically, that is, according to their relationship to the surrounding sedimentary layers. Outside of special cases, phylogenetic classification of trace fossils is unsatisfactory because the makers of most trace fossils are unknown.
Read more about Trace Fossil Classification: Taxonomic Classification, Toponomic Classification, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words trace and/or fossil:
“‘Tis chastity, my brother, chastity.
She that has that is clad in complete steel,
And like a quivered nymph with arrows keen
May trace huge forests and unharbored heaths,
Infamous hills and sandy perilous wilds,
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer
Will dare to soil her virgin purity.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)