Patrycja G. Dworczak’s scientific contributions

... Bioerosion marks serve as frequently encountered indicators of the dynamic interactions between organisms and their environment (Bromley 2004;Augustin et al. 2019). In the vertebrate fossil record, these structures are commonly inferred to signify instances of predation, scavenging, and are inferred to contribute to post-mortem degradation processes (Belaústegui et al. 2012;Higgs et al. 2014;Fernández-Jalvo and Andrews 2016;Ozeki et al. 2020;Szrek et al. 2021;Jamison-Todd et al. 2023). However, in the case of animals with dermal bone, such as turtles, their shells offer a distinctive substrate that is available for the development of bioerosional structure throughout the organism lifespan, unlike other vertebrate bone structures (e.g., Frick et al. 1998;Mader 2006;Pfaller et al. 2008;Zakhama-Sraieb et al. 2010). ...

Reference:

Bioerosional marks in the shells of two sea turtle taxa from the middle Eocene of Belgium