The influence of burrow-generated pseudobreccia on the preservation of fossil concentrations

Burrowed discontinuity surfaces associated with condensed fossil concentrations demarcate breaks (hiatuses) in the Phanerozoic marine sedimentary record. Such intervals may be difficult to interpret in view of complex anatomy and varied fossil signatures. Transformation of a discontinuity surface into a heavily burrowed ‘pseudobreccia’ may further complicate the record, but this issue has remained unexploited to date. The richly fossiliferous Cretaceous–Paleogene (Maastrichtian–Danian) boundary interval exposed in Poland provides opportunities to test the influence of burrow-generated pseudobreccia on the preservation of associated hiatal fossil concentrations. Here, we document pseudobreccia anatomy and fossil-sediment relationships by three-dimensional X-ray computed tomography imaging. In the pseudobreccia zone, we identify a distinctive assemblage of late Maastrichtian fossils, which underwent subsurface preparation by burrowers in a hitherto unreported ichno-taphonomic process. Recognition of pseudobreccia is a prerequisite for the interpretation of the stratigraphy, sedimentology and fossil record of such intervals, which is of special interest for periods of major biotic turnovers, like the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.