Conodonta
Sign in to saveConodonts are an extinct group of marine jawless vertebrates belonging to the class Conodonta (from Ancient Greek κῶνος (kōnos), meaning "cone", and ὀδούς (odoús), meaning "tooth"). They are primarily known from their hard, mineralised tooth-like structures called "conodont elements" that in life were present in the oral cavity and used to process food. Rare soft tissue remains suggest that they had elongate eel-like bodies with large eyes. Conodonts were a long-lasting group with over 300 million years of existence from the Cambrian (over 500 million years ago) to the beginning of the Jurassi
Article
19 sectionsContents
- Discovery and understanding of conodonts
- Nomenclature and taxonomic rank
- Conodont elements
- Lone elements
- Full apparatus
- Element types
- The conodont animal
- Ecology
- Diet
- Lifestyle
- Classification and phylogeny
- Affinities
- Ingroup relations
- Evolutionary history
- Taxonomy
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
Conodonts are an extinct group of marine jawless vertebrates belonging to the class Conodonta (from Ancient Greek κῶνος (kōnos), meaning "cone", and ὀδούς (odoús), meaning "tooth"). They are primarily known from their hard, mineralised tooth-like structures called "conodont elements" that in life were present in the oral cavity and used to process food. Rare soft tissue remains suggest that they had elongate eel-like bodies with large eyes. Conodonts were a long-lasting group with over 300 million years of existence from the Cambrian (over 500 million years ago) to the beginning of the Jurassic (around 200 million years ago). Conodont elements are highly distinctive to particular species and are widely used in biostratigraphy as indicative of particular periods of geological time.
== Discovery and understanding of conodonts == The teeth-like fossils of the conodont were first discovered by Heinz Christian Pander and the results published in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1856.