Re: Mesozoic burrows?

["Nicholas D. Pyenson" <npyenso@learnlink.emory.edu>]

jbois@umd5.umd.edu writes:
>Are there any burrows known from the Mesozoic--burrows from small to
>middle size mammals?  I saw a beautiful Miocene burrow at the Smithsonian
>and thought it strange that I've never read of one from the Mesozoic.

just recently Science News (June 9, 158:22) had a great cover article on
ichnology...
although they're not *mammal* burrows, HP James MacEachern (Simon Fraser
Univ., BC) and 
his South African colleagues described a large system of tunnels in South
Africa,
 probably made by the cynodont _Trirachodon_ along the floodplain of a
river (a similar system of tunnels 
were discovered several kilometers away from MacEachern's site with 20
_Trirachodon_ skeletons preserved in some of the tunnels, hence the
inference)...
more interesting is that some of the burrows were bilobate at the bottom, 
suggesting bidirectional movement (a two-way street) and even possibly
some form of sociality
in Triassic cynodonts...
HP Tony J. Martin at Emory University is also working on mammal burrows
from the Two Medicine formation in Montana (at the other end of the
Mesozoic and on the other side of the world).  I suggest contacting him at
geoam@learnlink.emory.edu -- he'd be glad to answer your questions on
burrows...


nick

npyenso@learnlink.emory.edu
Nick Pyenson
21943 Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322