Presentation Abstract

Faculty's Name: Frederick Rogers, Ph.D.

Co-registrant Names:

Type of Presentation: Faculty Research Lightning Round

Presentation Title: "Who Cares About Conodonts? I Do!"

Abstract:

Conodonts ("cone teeth"), or conodont elements, are small, tooth-like microfossils composed of the calcium phosphate mineral apatite, the mineral component of our teeth and bones. The elements are the only "hard parts" of what we now know were small, eel-like animals, conodont animals, that are a subphylum of our Phylum Chordata, and that inhabited the warm, shallow epicontinental seas of the Earth from about 520 million years ago until about 220 million years ago. The elements come in various shapes - coniform (cone shaped), ramiform (branching), and pectiniform (blade shaped or platform shaped) - that went together in an individual animal to form an apparatus. (For an analogy, think of our incisors, canines, premolars, and molars as the elements going together to form our full set of teeth, the apparatus.) The elements evolved rapidly, and so are useful for fine-scale time resolution within the sedimentary rocks, usually limestones, that contain them. For that long 300-million-year interval in which conodonts were alive and well, they are the pre-eminent fossils, especially the platform-shaped elements, for telling time in the rock record. This time significance of the elements forms the primary reason for the intense study of them.

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