Word.ws English Dictionary

ichnofossil

UK/ˈɪknəʊˌfɒsəl/

ichnofossil noun: a trace fossil; a fossil record that preserves some activity of an organism, but no part of the organism itself.

ichnofossil: a trace fossil; a fossil record that preserves some activity of an organism, but no part of the...
Image: Ballista, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

ichnofossil (plural ichnofossils)

  1. A trace fossil; a fossil record that preserves some activity of an organism, but no part of the organism itself.
    • For example, an ichnofossil might be the preserved track an animal, or its burrow.
    • Suites of taphonomic factors that influence body fossils and ichnofossils are clearly not identical. Nonetheless, without too much twisting, ichnofossil-lagerstätten can be placed into the same genetic categories.2007, Charles E. Savrda, “6: Taphonomy of Trace Fossils”, in William Miller, III, editor, Trace Fossils, Elsevier, page 106

Examples of ichnofossil in a sentence

  • The only abundant ichnofossils are large and inclined structures in La Cancha Bed (Profile K), interpreted as mammal burrows.2010, Eduardo S. Bellosi et al., “21: Ichnofacies Examination of the Sarmiento Formation”, in R. H. Madden, A. A. Carlini, M. G. Vucetich...
  • Changes in the preservational environment in the thousands or millions of years between the creation of each set of prints results in these different forms of ichnofossil.2017 March 22, Elsa Panciroli, “Walking in the footsteps of giants and gerbils: what fossil prints can tell us”, in The Guardian:

Forms of ichnofossil

pluralichnofossils

Origin of ichnofossil

From ichno- + fossil.

Questions about ichnofossil

What does ichnofossil mean?
Ichnofossil means a trace fossil; a fossil record that preserves some activity of an organism, but no part of the organism itself.
How do you use ichnofossil in a sentence?
The only abundant ichnofossils are large and inclined structures in La Cancha Bed (Profile K), interpreted as mammal burrows.
What part of speech is ichnofossil?
Ichnofossil is a noun.
How do you pronounce ichnofossil?
Ichnofossil is pronounced /ˈɪknəʊˌfɒsəl/ (UK).
What is the plural of ichnofossil?
The plural of ichnofossil is ichnofossils.

Words near ichnofossil in the dictionary

  1. ichnofamilies
  2. ichnofamily
  3. ichnofauna
  4. ichnofaunal
  5. ichnofaunas
  6. ichnofossil
  7. ichnofossils
  8. ichnogenera
  9. ichnogeneric
  10. ichnogenetic
  11. ichnogenus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ichnofossil (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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