Bivalve borings in fossil wood from the Cretaceous of Australia. (public display, Gorman Nature Center, Mansfield, Ohio, USA)
The dark material in this specimen is quartz-permineralized, araucariacean conifer wood. The rounded and elongated areas within the wood are borings (drill holes) called Teredolites. The borings were made by "shipworm" bivalves that specialize in drilling into wood (see:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teredo_navalis). The light-colored fill in the borings is radiolarite, a siliceous sedimentary rock formed by lithification of radiolarian-rich sediments. (see:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolaria). The host rock for the fossil wood is radiolarite.
Rockhounds call this material "peanut wood".
Classification of trace makers: Animalia, Mollusca, Bivalvia, Heterodonta, Myoida, Teredinidae
Classification of wood: Plantae, Pinophyta, Pinopsida, Pinales, Araucariaceae
Stratigraphy: Windalia Radiolarite, Aptian to Albian Stages, upper Lower Cretaceous
Locality: Mooka Creek area, Kennedy Ranges, Western Australia
