Ancient marine organisms that excavated holes in shells and other calcium carbonate substrates on the sea bed have not been widely studied by palaeontologists. Together with scrape and scratch marks made by rasping grazers on shell surfaces, they constitute a group of hard–substrate trace fossils that have many modern equivalents. Even the smallest forms can be studied by casting the holes in plastic resin and dissolving the shell. The variety of borers increased in the Mesozoic Era, thereby avoiding the attentions of predatory groups that were radiating at the same time.
Small rosette borings, consisting of an excavated pit from which is subtended a system of branching galleries, are common in carbonate skeletal substrates in the Upper Jurassic Oxford Clay (CallovianOxfordian) and Kimmeridge Clay (Kimmeridgian) of southern England and northern France. The opening of the pit onto the substrate surface is surrounded by an agglutinated collar, which suggests that they may be the work of Foraminifera. The new genus and species, Globodendrina m o d e , are erected to accommodate them. Other examples of boring in the Foraminiferida are reviewed. It is proposed that other similar rosette boring ichnogenera may also be the work of foraminiferans. 1. Micropalaeontol., 12 ( 1 ) : 83-89, August 1993.
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