Abstract Chickies Rock rises abruptly from the east bank of the Susquehanna River at Columbia, Pennsylvania, where it breaks through a ridge held up by massively bedded quartzite. Here in the 1830s, Samuel Haldeman recognized long straight tubes that he later described as Skolithos linearis , penetrating the quartzite. Uncertain about the nature of these cylindrical ‘vermiform or linear’, unbranched ‘stems’, Haldeman first treated them as a subgenus of Fucoides , to which root-like traces were then often assigned. By the time James Hall first illustrated the species in 1847, Haldeman was sure they were burrows of a worm-like animal, as the name he had chosen implied. Since 1960, Donald Wise has developed a detailed analysis of structural deformation of the Chickies Anticline, using the Skolithos burrows as ‘plumb-bobs’ against which Taconic rotation of the rock fabric can be measured. Wise showed that later Alleghanian deformation produced prominent folds with external rotation up to twice as great as that of the rock fabric itself. Now conserved as a county park, Chickies Rock attracts many visitors. Its cliff-top is a superb viewpoint from which to contemplate progressive westward migration of the Appalachian drainage divide, ongoing since the late Jurassic opening of the Atlantic Ocean.

Abstract The main Karoo Basin of South Africa and Lesotho preserves c. 120 myr of Earth's history. The sedimentary rocks of its Karoo Supergroup record massive environmental changes from the glacial Carboniferous to desert dunes and fiery flood basalts in the Early Jurassic. From the early Permian, the Karoo Basin was gradually filled with fluvial and lacustrine deposits, and the alluvial plains were successively colonized by a diverse suite of plants and animals. The fossils of these ancient inhabitants and their behavioural traces form an astounding Gondwanan geoheritage legacy in southern Africa, providing fossil evidence for the moving lithospheric plates and the effects of four mass extinctions and their subsequent biotic recovery. Here, we present six Karoo sites of global geoscientific importance that best display that heritage, with the caveat that these sites only touch upon the Karoo riches that are available for academic research and the emerging palaeotourism industry. It is our hope that these sites will become anchor points for a sustainable geoheritage future in southern Africa.

Abstract The shallow marine carbonate deposits of the S. Miguel Formation in the Lusitanian Basin reveal erosional events exposing stiff substrates with abundant Bergaueria hemispherica . The ichnoassociation represented by B. hemispherica , Thalassinoides suevicus , Spongeliomorpha isp., Asterosoma ludwigae and Rhizocorallium commune is dated from lowermost Pliensbachian by the association with ammonites from the jamesoni Biozone, brevispina Subzone. The unlined forms of B. hemispherica include peripheral and bottom burrow concentrations of shell debris, annular-like structures in the burrow margin and paired burrows-to-linear clusters that are comparable with the penetrative burrowing mechanism, anchoring and feeding behaviours of sea anemones. From the ethological point of view, and comparing with modern behaviours of burrowing anemones, the B. hemispherica from the Lusitanian Basin may represent temporary burrowing and relocation of actiniarian anemones. Their comparison with either thenarian or athenarian actiniarians may evidence a preferred surficial feeding strategy on the organic-rich muddy sediments they burrowed.