Ichnology of Latin America - Selected Papers

Ichnology, the study of traces, is a fast growing field that feeds from different and diverse disciplinessuch as sedimentology, stratigraphy, biology andpaleontology. The special publication “Ichnology of Latin America - Selected Papers” arose after the Latin American Symposium on Ichnology 2010 (SLIC2010) that was held from October 30th to November7th, 2010, in Sao Leopoldo, south of Brazil. About eighty participants attended the conference, representing 21 institutions from South America, 1 from Central America, 3 from North America, 3 from Europe, and 1 from Asia. The ichnologic community of Latin America is not only one of the largest, but also one of the most active. In that sense, it was worthy to produce this special volume as a synthesis of the current knowledge of ichnology in Latin America. Two papers address the importance of the trace fossils in the terminal Proterozoic-early Phanerozoic successions of South America. Netto (p. 15-26) synthesizes the knowledge of biogenic structures, body fossils and microbially induced sedimentary structures of the terminal Proterozoic basins of southern Brazil, and discusses the possible relationship between these bedsand those from the Avalonian terrane. Buatois & Mángano (p. 27-36) review the ichnology of the Ediacaran-Cambrian Puncoviscana Formation of the North of Argentina from a paleoecologic and macroevolutionary perspective, emphasizing the importance of the feeding strategies related to microbial matgrounds recordedin this succession, as well as the appearance of new body plans and sophisticated feeding strategies. The other contributions explore part of the Phanerozoic ichnologic record in Latin America. Netto et al. (p. 37-68) make a synthetic review of the ichnology of the Paraná Basin in southern Brazil, with emphasis in the invertebrate record. Alonzo-Muruaga et al. (p. 69-81) present the state-of-art of the ichnology of the Upper Paleozoic deposits of Paganzo and Callingasta-Uspallata basins, in the northwestern Argentina. Carmona et al. (p. 83-97) characterize the most representative trace fossils from the Neogene marine deposits of Patagonia (southeastern Argentina), providing an analysis of this ichnofauna considering local paleoceanographic conditions and exploring its relation with the establishment of the Modern Evolutionary Fauna. VillegasMartín & Rojas-Consuegra (p. 99-106) synthesize the knowledge of the Cuban ichnology through the analysis of the existing literature and the material available in collections. These authors also discuss the future perspectives of thisdiscipline in Cuba. Finally, Souto (p. 107-115) over-views the records of vertebrate’s coprolites found indifferent units of Latin America, providing a general evaluation of morphologic aspects necessary todescribe these structures, and introducing the new methods to study them. Some case studies are also presented herein, reflecting the emergent ichnological research in Latin America. Invertebrate and vertebrate bioturbaton as well as bioerosion are the main addressed themes. Souza et al. (p. 119-128) present an initial approach to the ichnology of the Lower Devonian Maecuru Formation (Amazonas Basin, northern Brazil). Dentzien-Dias et al. (p. 129-139) describe vertebrate trace fossils from the Upper Jurassic GuaráFormation (south of Brazil) and the Batoví Memberof the Tacuarembó Formation (north of Uruguay), which contain numerous dinosaur tracks, dominatedby theropod and sauropod tracks and different ver-tebrate burrows. Frank et al. (p. 141-157) synthesizethe present knowledge of large tunnels assigned toCenozoic vertebrates in the southern states of Brazil, and try to identify the possible tracemakers among the South American Megafauna representatives. In the field of bioerosion, Richiano et al. (p. 159-177) focus on the bioerosion structures in Quaternary marine mollusks from the Atlantic Argentine coast (from Rio de la Plata to the south of Santa Cruz province) while Lopes (p. 179-194) describes the bioerosion and bioincrustation in Quaternary body fossilsfrom the Coastal Plain of Rio Grande do Sul State(CPRS), in southern Brazil. There is much more of the ichnology of Latin America than what is presented in this book. Severalhigh quality papers have been published in indexed journals in the last 30 years, and innumerous papers were published in local journals since the 1950s. An important part of this knowledge is missing inthis book, but future editions of the Latin AmericanSymposium on Ichnology will help to fill this gap. To all contributors that helped to construct this compendium, our sincere gratitude. Our special thanks to Jordi M. de Gibert, who was a great enthusiast of the ichnologic research developed in Latin America and who contributed to make this book a reality until hispassing, last September.