Talk:Conodont

Integrity of Article
OK, facts as presented are pretty correct and don't deserve critics - but, the taxobox says ... no hints that conodonta/conodontophora are Animalia&gt;Chordata&gt;Vertebrata, while the text says protoconodonta may be Animalia&gt;Chaetognatha... How to resolve inner conflict?? Rursus 20:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


 * This is a serious fact error, but nobody have reacted!. I'll see if I can protest on a better instance than this page. In fact protoconodonts are commonly believed to be Chaetognatha. Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 17:37, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Now, continually nagging: Conodonts have no taxonomic position, since scale fossils or jaw fossils have no taxonomic position. The taxobox shall be removed, (in fact moved to protoconodonta, paraconodonta and euconodonta. The article presumes that all conodonts are chordata – it shouldn't until such an opinion is strongly dominant amongst all paleontologists. Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 17:46, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * While teeth and scales have no taxonomy beyond the creatures they belong to, there have been found full bodied specimens of conodonts (Aldridge et al. 1993), which enables them to be classified taxonomically. However, the debate is whether or not they are vertebrates.  They are definately craniates (they have well developed eyes), but there is still a lot of debate whether or not they are vertebrates, especially since the idea that hagfish might not be true vertebrates, as they lack any kind of vertebral column is gaining popularity.  Opendestiny 14:59, 18 October 2007

Referring to the animal
Is the animal, sensu stricto, called a conodont? I'm pretty sure that this is sloppy language which should not be endorsed by an encyclopaedia - but I may well be incorrect. Verisimilus  T  15:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You are correct, the fossilized teeth that are preserved in the rock record are referred to as conodonts, not the animal itself. However, this is actually addressed in the article.


 * Thanks for fixing that. Verisimilus  T  11:42, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've not had chance to have a proper look at this, but it appears to favour the animal being a conodont, and the "teeth" "Conodont elements". Worth following up (and incorporating)? Verisimilus  T  12:01, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Note also that Conodonta, Paraconodonta and Euconodonta, all clades of animals, are all re-directed to Conodont. So the article needs to cover the animal and the teeth, or different articles need to be written for Conodonta etc. Bondegezou 10:26, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so I was not as specific as I should have been. Conodont does in fact refer to the conodont elements, the teeth. Elements is specified as the conodont apparatus is an assemblage of these conodont elements. The animal itself is referred to as the "conodont animal". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.56.5.35 (talk) 22:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)


 * That's not my understanding of the current situation (while it obviously was the case in the past). Do you have an up-to-date reference stating this?  I suspect that there may not even be an agreed standard... Verisimilus  T  10:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

the first paragraph basically makes no sense....it dosent even explain what the article is about since the name "conodont" is not given to either the teeth of the animal (those are called conodont elements) nor the animal itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.159.123.149 (talk) 06:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Use in Geology
Shouldn't there be some mention of the fact that the color of a conodont indicates the temperature the surrounding rock was cooked at? This also indicates the quality of any surrounding oil because oil must be cooked in a very small heat range.

I do believe this fact is attributed to Anita Harris of the USGS. 64.74.212.1 (talk) 14:54, 25 May 2008 (UTC)


 * There is a link to conodont alteration index in the section 'Conodont teeth fossils' William Avery (talk) 17:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Dental functions
A new study has shed light on the various types of teeth in conodonts. Tomorrow, Texas Tech Graduate Student Nicole Peavey is to present her results with the Geological Society of America's annual conference in Denver. Just something to keep an eye on for now; it may be worthwile to have a look at any publications which arise from this study. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 23:07, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Tree
I hope everybody's happy with the tree. Making a tree for the conodonts, as it turns out, is a real pain in the backside. My main source for this was Sweet and Donoghue's 2001 paper, which gives the conodonts in context, although is not based on rigourous cladistic analysis, only on Sweet's hypotheses in other papers. However, the part of the tree dealing with the euconodonts was largely rewritten after Donoghue's 2007 paper, which did do a proper analysis, but only on the complex conodonts (the prioniodontidae). This tree, from what I gather from the paper, reshuffled many of the taxa into different families and created many new orders. Obviously its relatively new, so could change, but I'm fairly happy with the method so its up.

Also, I know that recent papers are saying that the lampreys and the hagfish belong together as Cyclostomes but I have included them here as separate crown taxa - I mentionnned this in a footnote. || instantn00dle 17:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Picture(s)
I appreciate the pictures of the conodont "teeth", and the drawing of the animal; but there must be a photograph and/or drawing of the fossilized body(or maybe partial fossils) somewhere, which would add a lot to this article. Mcswell (talk) 00:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Date
Any updates on how old the oldest conodonts are? I know there have been some contentious dates, but latest Ediacaran to Lower Cambrian seem to be coming up more often. For example here and here A lot of research papers, but I'm reluctant to go with that until the Encyclopedia Britannica people say it's for real. Zyxwv99 (talk) 23:38, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

New artist's interpretation
Amazing new image brought to my attention by Pharyngula. Link here. Anyone with experience able to see if we can use the image here? Blue Danube (talk) 04:26, 9 July 2016 (UTC)