Morphology and ethology of trace fossils from the Ouachita Mountains, southeast Oklahoma

Trace fossils are common in the Mississippian-Pennsylvanian rocks of the Ouachita Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, and many are the only representations of soft-bodied animals otherwise unknown in the fossil record. Forty-four ichnospecies (11 new) are referred to 32 ichnogenera (6 new) and assigned to Seilacher's (1953, 1954) behavioral types. The new forms are Lanicoidichna metuluta, new ichnogenus and species; Pilichnia elliptica, new ichnogenus and species; Scolicia vada, new ichnospecies; Scolicia virgamontis, new ichnospecies; ?Planolites octichnus, new ichnospecies; Sustergichnus lenadumbratus, new ichnogenus and species; Parahaentzschelinia ardelia, new ichnogenus and species;  Mammillichnis aggeris, new ichnogenus and species; Micatuba verso, new ichnogenus and species; Lophoctenium haudimmineri, new ichnospecies; and Stelloglyphus floris, new ichnospecies. The Ouachita specimens provide new information on old forms as follows. The precise hexagonal nets of Paleodictyon developed by successive simple overlapping meanders by a wormlike animal. Ateriacites lumbricalis Schlotheim is a feeding and resting burrow of an ophiuroid compared to the Ouachita hiding form. Conostichus was made by burrowing sea anemones, probably halcampoids. Scalarituba was created by deliberate packing of successive laminae into ventrolateral pustules.