What does the name conodont mean?
Conodonts (Greek kōnos, “cone”, + odont, “tooth”) are an extinct group of agnathan (jawless) vertebrates resembling eels, classified in the class Conodonta. Conodonts elements are widely used as index fossils, fossils used to define and identify geological periods.
What are conodont fossils?
Conodonts are a group of extinct microfossils known from the Late Cambrian (approximately 500 million years ago) to the Late Triassic (about 200 million years ago). They are the only known hard parts of an extinct group of animals believed to be distantly related to the living hagfish.
How big is a conodont?
Conodonts are commonly between 200 microns and 5 millimeters in size and can be sieved from finer materials and further concentrated by heavy liquid or ultrasonic techniques.
Is a conodont a vertebrate?
Conodonts are an extinct group of jawless vertebrates whose tooth-like elements are the earliest instance of a mineralized skeleton in the vertebrate lineage1,2, inspiring the ‘inside-out’ hypothesis that teeth evolved independently of the vertebrate dermal skeleton and before the origin of jaws3,4,5,6.
Do conodonts have jaws?
Conodonts are an extinct group of jawless vertebrates whose tooth-like elements are the earliest instance of a mineralized skeleton in the vertebrate lineage, inspiring the ‘inside-out’ hypothesis that teeth evolved independently of the vertebrate dermal skeleton and before the origin of jaws.
Are conodonts Ostracoderms?
Are conodonts Ostracoderms? Conodonts are considered a type of jawless fish becuase even though they have a complex feeding mechanism with teeth, their “jaws” operate very differently from later vertebrates whose jaws have developed by modification of a pair of gill arches. Ostracoderms – early jawless armored fishes.
Where are conodont fossils found?
Conodont teeth are very common fossils in the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, and Pennsylvanian rocks in Kentucky. Conodont teeth fossils are microscopic and are studied by micropaleontologists, who use them to establish relative ages of the rocks in which they were found.