Famennian trace fossils, covered bridges, beach ridges, grape growing, and stream anticlines of Ashtabula County, Ohio, and Erie County, Pennsylvania, USA

ABSTRACT This one-day, multi-state field trip visits trace-fossil sites in Ashtabula County, Ohio and western Pennsylvania, USA, that allow a direct comparison of ichnological elements of the Chagrin Member of the Ohio Shale in Ohio with those of the Northeast Shale through Chadakoin Formation of western Pennsylvania. Some of these rocks contain numerous Rusophycus-like megaburrows as well as smaller Lingulichnus and Diplocraterion trace fossils; others contain smaller phyllocarid traces belonging to the genus Protovirgularia M’Coy, 1850, previously identified as Rusophycus or as Chagrinichnites (the latter currently considered a junior subjective synonym of Protovirgularia). Sites with large trace fossils are found, in part, near covered bridges, so these bridges will be briefly described, as will the stream anticlines that are abundant in this area, sand barrens along a beach ridge, and an agricultural research station focusing on grape growing, contextualizing the traces within the broader geological and cultural milieu of northwest Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio.