Bioimmuring Late Cretaceous and Recent oysters: 'A view from within'

Being obligate cementers, oysters (Ostreoidea), both fossil and Recent, often yield valuable information on their substrates, whether biotic/abiotic, perishable or inert. By a process called bioimmuration, oyster shells may preserve lightly or non-calcified sessile organisms already present on the same substrates, and occasionally replicate external features of such substrates on their unattached right valves (xenomorphism). From Upper Cretaceous (Campanian- Maastrichtian) strata in northwest Europe, there are numerous records of oysters attached to calcitic and aragonitic substrates, such as... Mehr ...