Rhizoliths


DESCRIPTION: Filamentous to tubular structures that range in diameter from <1 millimeter 10+ cm; can taper down or laterally but often same diameter. Complex network of traces that regularly branch, and interweave with one another. Strongly to weakly dendritic.

BEHAVIOR(S): Traces reflect patterns produced by ground plants and trees with roots or rooting structures and preserve the behavior of the plant with respect to the media conditions. Types of preservation include cellular structure, coaly films, molds and casts, drab haloes, rhizocretions, deflections of bedding planes, and brecciation and tepee structures in carbonates. Traces preserve the behavior of the plant with respect to the media conditions. Roots live and die, move upward and downward depending on the soil moisture and water table levels (Hasiotis, 2002).

ENVIRONMENTAL SETTINGS: Mostly terrestrial, but also aquatic freshwater and marine. Found in a wide variety of environments from weakly- to well-developed paleosols formed on proximal to distal alluvial and marginal-lacustrine to shallow lacustrine environments to eolian.

POSSIBLE TRACEMAKERS: Plants with rooting structures

GEOLOGIC RANGE:
Terrestrial: Ordovician-recent.
Aquatic: Cretaceous-recent

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES: (Loope, 1988)(Kraus and Hasiotis, 2006)