Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Flessa, K. W. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

Well-traveled cockles: Shell transport during the Holocene transgression of the southern North Sea

¹ Department of Geosciences and Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721

Radiocarbon dates from 34 shells of the intertidal bivalve Cerastoderma edule demonstrate that shells were transported in both landward and seaward directions during the Holocene transgression of the southern North Sea. Old shells on the beaches of the East Frisian Islands of Germany document landward transport and young shells in the German Bight and Dogger Bank document seaward transport. The area's sea-level curve and the shell ages were used to predict the original depth of each specimen. The difference between a specimen's predicted age and its present depth is a measure of depth displacement. Depth displacements ranged from +35 to –37 m. Eight shells remained within 2.5 m of their original depth and roughly equal proportions of the rest moved landward and seaward. Specimens transported into deeper water are a very small fraction of the shells at that depth, whereas specimens transported into shallow water occur alongside abundant indigenous individuals of the same species. Rare fossils should not be used to estimate paleodepths.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				M. A. Kosnik, Q. Hua, D. S. Kaufman, and R. A. Wust Taphonomic bias and time-averaging in tropical molluscan death assemblages: differential shell half-lives in Great Barrier Reef sediment Paleobiology, December 1, 2009; 35(4): 565 - 586. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				S. Finnegan and M. L. Droser Reworking Diversity: Effects Of Storm Deposition On Evenness And Sampled Richness, Ordovician Of The Basin And Range, Utah And Nevada, Usa Palaios, February 1, 2008; 23(2): 87 - 96. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				Quantitative Taphonomy in Sandstones from an Ancient Fan Delta System (Lower Pleistocene,Western Emilia, Italy) Palaios, June 1, 2004; 19(3): 193 - 205.

				Quantitative estimates of time-averaging in terebratulid brachiopod shell accumulations from a modern tropical shelf Paleobiology, September 1, 2003; 29(3): 381 - 402.

				M. Kowalewski, G. E. A. Serrano, K. W. Flessa, and G. A. Goodfriend Dead delta's former productivity: Two trillion shells at the mouth of the Colorado River Geology, December 1, 2000; 28(12): 1059 - 1062. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				Bivalve taphonomy in tropical mixed siliciclastic-carbonate settings. I. Environmental variation in shell condition Paleobiology, March 1, 2000; 26(1): 80 - 102.