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A fascinating, comprehensive, accessible account of conodont fossils—one of paleontology’s greatest mysteries: “Deserves to be widely read and enjoyed” (Priscum). Stephen Jay Gould borrowed from Winston Churchill when he described the eel-like conodont animal as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The search for its identity confounded scientists for more than a century. Some thought it a slug, others a fish, a worm, a plant, even a primitive ancestor of ourselves. As the list of possibilities grew, an answer to the riddle never seemed any nearer. Would the animal that left behind the miniscule fossils known as conodonts ever be identified? Three times the creature was found, but each was quite different from the others. Were any of them really the one? Simon J. Knell takes the reader on a journey through 150 years of scientific thinking, imagining, and arguing. Slowly the animal begins to reveal traces of itself: its lifestyle, its remarkable evolution, its witnessing of great catastrophes, its movements over the surface of the planet, and finally its anatomy. Today the conodont animal remains perhaps the most disputed creature in the zoological world.
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The shallow-shelf carbonates of the Lower Border group and equivalent strata of the Northumberland trough have yielded conodont elements belonging to 28 multielement species. Study of these cavusgnathid-dominated faunas highlights the need for major revision of the Cavusgnathidae. Cloghergnatus globenskii Austin is an ecophenotype of Taphrognathus varians Branson and Mehl; Cloghergnathus Austin is ajunior synonym of Taphrognathus Branson and Mehl, Capricornognathus Austin appears to be a junior synonym of Patrognathus Rhodes, Austin, and Druce. The appartuses of Cavusgnathus hudsoni (Metcalfe), Taphrognathus varians, Polygnathus mehli Thompson, and Apatognathus cuspidatus Varker are described for the first time. Patrognathus capricornis (Druce), Mestognathus beckmanni Bischoff, Polygnathus bischoffi Rhodes, Austin, and Druce, and "Apatognathus" sp. a are partially reconstructed. The assignment of C. hudsoni to Cavusgnathus extends the range of the genus into the Tournaisian Series in Britain.
Very Good,No Highlights or Markup,all pages are intact.
Conodonts, the tiny, phosphatic, tooth-like remains of an extinct group of early vertebrates, are the most important fossil group for biostratigraphy throughout their stratigraphic range from Late Cambrian to Late Triassic. This monograph represents a benchmark study of these important zonal fossils. The detailed paleontological work not only provides a taxonomic basis for future studies on early Paleozoic conodonts but also focuses on the evolution of conodonts in the early Ordovician, a time of extraordinary adaptive radiation. The taxonomic work provides detailed descriptions and illustrations of 185 species representing 69 genera. Seven new genera and 39 new species are described. The high diversity of taxa across the platform-to-basin transect shows the biogeographic differentiation and spatial ecological partitioning of conodonts through time. The taxonomy permits the refinement to the biostratigraphic zonation within two faunal realms for British Columbia that can be correlated with schemes elsewhere in North America and also internationally.