Sentences with phrase «of conodonts»

Different groups of conodonts shed light on what temperatures were at different depths.

In April, researchers at the University of Birmingham reported finding dentine — another trait of vertebrates — in the hard, toothlike apparatus of a conodont's mouth.

Not exact matches

Ordovician strata are characterized by numerous and diverse trilobites and conodonts (phosphatic fossils with a tooth - like appearance) found in sequences of shale, limestone, dolostone, and sandstone.

Another standard biostratigraphic method — linking the timing of different rock layers by the comings and goings of fossilized teeth of tiny eellike creatures called conodonts — also couldn't be used, because the same species didn't live in cool and tropical waters.

Collectively they are known as conodonts for the ring of long, conical teeth in their pharynx.

Conodonts, tiny eel - like creatures that lived from 520 million to 205 million years ago and were our earliest vertebrate relatives, have long been one of paleontology's great enigmas.

Charting how researchers have conceptualized the conodont animal, Knell offers a fresh perspective on the challenges of understanding unusual extinct taxa.

Mark Purnell and colleagues at the University of Leicester have found the most complete conodont fossil to date, and used it to reconstruct the animal's anatomy.

If the conodonts are classified as vertebrates, it suggests that vertebrate skeletons evolved not from the protective scales of fish, but from teeth.

Fossilised soft tissue from an extinct group of eel - like creatures, called conodonts, has yielded support for the idea that vertebrates existed 40 million years earlier than previously believed.

A quarter of invertebrate families met extinction, as well as the conodonts.

The Devonian is often appropriately called the «Age of Fishes», since the fish took their place in complex reef systems containing nautiloids, corals, graptolites, blastods, echinoderms, trilobites, sponges, brachiopods and conodonts.

3) Fossil teeth are made of durable enamel, and like pollen, some types are widespread — «conodonts» in particular, have been used to trace temperatures.

«We had to go through several tons of rock to look at tiny conodont fossils,» Wignall said.