Chapter 15 - Deep-Sea Ichnology: Development of Major Concepts

Abstract

Exploration of the deep-sea floors began relatively late in comparison to the exploration of land. In fact, the deep seas remained an enigmatic habitat considered as a hostile, stable “deep-sea desert” almost until research in the 1950s. The picture of the deep seas is quite different nowadays after half a century of exploration and research with the application of increasingly sophisticated tools and methods. As a result, the deep sea is now recognized as a complex habitat subject to periodic and various changes of environmental parameters at different space and time scales. Recognition of deep sea life in the geological past is not easy. The record of invertebrate body fossils is very fragmentary, and vertebrate fossils are exceptional. Trace fossils, however, supply much information, recording infaunal and some epifaunal behavior, mostly that of invertebrates. In general, the highest diversity of trace fossils characterizes the thick, deep-sea turbiditic sediments. The diversity is lower in fine-grained pelagic and hemipelagic sediments deposited more or less continuously and commonly far away from the continental margins. The aim of this chapter is to develop major concepts of deep-sea ichnology in different topics and in historical perspective.