The New Zealand Zoophycos revisited: Morphology, ethology, and paleoecology

Large, well‐preserved Zoophycos specimens are abundant and widespread in the Amuri Limestone Group (Upper Cretaceous‐lower Oligocene) on the South Island of New Zealand. Although several previous workers have offered detailed descriptions of Zoophycos in the group, their hypotheses concerning its mode of production have flaws. We propose a new ethologic explanation of Zoophycos that avoids pitfalls of previously published explanations.