Arenicola wormkokers op de Hors, Texel

Layers with empty vertical tubes were eroded on a tidal flat at the southern tip of the Island of Texel in the Marsdiep area of the Wadden Sea. They were most probably the upper part of the tail shafts of the lugworm Arenicola marina. Linke (1939) gave already pictures of such a tailshaft on a tidal flat in the Jadebusen protruding because the sand around was eroded. If one wants to give an ichnospecies name to these structures, the most obvious is Arenicolites, The lugworm Arenicola was the name giver of U-shaped trace fossils found in many deposits since the Precambrian Ediacaran period. However, certainly Arenicolites traces may be produced by many different organisms.