Related Research Articles
Conodonts are an extinct group of agnathan (jawless) vertebrates resembling eels, classified in the class Conodonta. For many years, they were known only from their tooth-like oral elements, which are usually found in isolation and are now called conodont elements. Knowledge about soft tissues remains limited. They existed in the world's oceans for over 300 million years, from the Cambrian to the beginning of the Jurassic. Conodont elements are widely used as index fossils, fossils used to define and identify geological periods. The animals are also called Conodontophora to avoid ambiguity.
Trilobites are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the Atdabanian stage of the Early Cambrian period and they flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic before slipping into a long decline, when, during the Devonian, all trilobite orders except the Proetida died out. The last extant trilobites finally disappeared in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian about 252 million years ago. Trilobites were among the most successful of all early animals, existing in oceans for almost 270 million years, with over 22,000 species having been described.
A Lagerstätte is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossils with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues. These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus delaying the decomposition of both gross and fine biological features until long after a durable impression was created in the surrounding matrix. Lagerstätten span geological time from the Neoproterozoic era to the present. Worldwide, some of the best examples of near-perfect fossilization are the Cambrian Maotianshan shales and Burgess Shale, the Silurian Waukesha Biota, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates and Gogo Formation, the Carboniferous Mazon Creek, the Jurassic Posidonia Shale and Solnhofen Limestone, the Cretaceous Yixian, Santana, and Agua Nueva formations, the Eocene Green River Formation, the Miocene Foulden Maar and Ashfall Fossil Beds, the Pliocene Gray Fossil Site, the Pleistocene Naracoorte Caves, the La Brea Tar Pits, and the Tanis Fossil Site.
Richard Alan Fortey is a British palaeontologist, natural historian, writer and television presenter, who served as president of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007.
Harry Blackmore Whittington FRS was a British palaeontologist who made a major contribution to the study of fossils of the Burgess Shale and other Cambrian fauna. His works are largely responsible for the concept of Cambrian explosion, whereby modern animal body plans are explained to originate during a short span of geological period. With initial work on trilobites, his discoveries revealed that these arthropods were the most diversified of all invertebrates during the Cambrian Period. He was responsible for setting the standard for naming and describing the delicate fossils preserved in Konservat-Lagerstätten.
Derek Ernest Gilmor Briggs is an Irish palaeontologist and taphonomist based at Yale University. Briggs is one of three palaeontologists, along with Harry Blackmore Whittington and Simon Conway Morris, who were key in the reinterpretation of the fossils of the Burgess Shale. He is the Yale University G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, and former Director of the Peabody Museum.
Promissum is an extinct genus of conodonts, primitive chordates, that lived during the Upper Ordovician period.
Ronald Pearson Tripp FRSE was a British palaeontologist specializing in trilobites. He was self-taught in palaeontology and became an authority on the taxonomy of the trilobite order Lichida and the trilobite family Encrinuridae.
Philip Conrad James Donoghue FRS is a British palaeontologist and Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol.
Yunnanocephalus is a genus of ptychopariid trilobite. It lived during the late Atdabanian and Botomian stages, in what are currently Antarctica, Australia and China. It was a "moderately common" member of the Chengjiang Fauna. Yunnanocephalus is the only genus currently assigned to the Yunnanocephalidae family.
A number of assemblages bear fossil assemblages similar in character to that of the Burgess Shale. While many are also preserved in a similar fashion to the Burgess Shale, the term "Burgess Shale-type fauna" covers assemblages based on taxonomic criteria only.
Richard John Aldridge was a British palaeontologist and academic, who was Bennett Professor of Geology at the University of Leicester.
M. Paul Smith is a British palaeontologist, head of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and professor in Kellogg College. Previously he was Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham, head of the university's School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Director of its Lapworth Museum of Geology. He received his BSc from the University of Leicester and his PhD from the University of Nottingham.
Holochroal eyes are compound eyes with many tiny lenses. They are the oldest and most common type of trilobite eye, and found in all orders of trilobite from the Cambrian to the Permian periods. Lenses covered a curved, kidney-shaped visual surface in a hexagonal close packing system, with a single corneal membrane covering all lenses. Unlike in schizochroal eyes, adjacent lenses were in direct contact with one another. Lens shape generally depended on cuticle thickness. The lenses of trilobites with thin cuticles were thin and biconvex, whereas those with thick cuticles had thick lenses, which in extreme cases, could be thick columns with the outer surface flattened and the inner surface hemispherical. Regardless of lens thickness, however, the point at which light was focused was roughly the same distance below the lens.
Prioniodontida, also known as the "complex conodonts", is a large clade of conodonts that includes two major evolutionary grades; the Prioniodinina and the Ozarkodinina. It includes many of the more famous conodonts, such as the giant ordovician Promissum (Prioniodinina) from the Soom Shale and the Carboniferous specimens from the Granton Shrimp bed (Ozarkodinina). They are euconodonts, in that their elements are composed of two layers; the crown and the basal body, and are assumed to be a clade.
The Soom Shale is a member of the Late Ordovician (Hirnantian) Cederberg Formation in South Africa, renowned for its remarkable preservation of soft-tissue in fossil material. Deposited in still waters, the unit lacks bioturbation, perhaps indicating anoxic conditions.
The Lapworth Medal is the highest award of the Palaeontological Association, given to those who have made a significant contribution to the science by means of a substantial body of research.
The conodont feeding apparatus is a series of phosphatic-mineralized elements, resembling a set of “teeth”, which are found lining the oral surface of the conodont animal.
The Granton Shrimp Bed is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, in Scotland. It is classified as a Konservat-Lagerstätten because of the exceptional quality of preservation of the fossils and is dominated by crustaceans; the deposit dates back to the Lower Carboniferous, some 359 to 323 million years ago.
Panderodus Is an extinct genus of jawless fish belonging to the order Conodonta. This genus had a long temporal range, surviving from the middle Ordovician to late Devonian. In 2021, extremely rare body fossils of Panderodus from the Waukesha Biota were described, and it revealed that Panderodus had a more thick body compared to the more slender bodies of more advanced conodonts. It also revealed that this conodont was a macrophagous predator, meaning it went after large prey.
References
- 1 2 3 Geological Society of London, Coke medal award
- ↑ Clarkson, E. N. K.; Levi-Setti, R. L. (1975), "Trilobite eyes and the optics of Descartes and Huygens", Nature , 254 (5502): 663–7, doi:10.1038/254663a0, PMID 1091864
- ↑ Clarkson, E. N. K. (1979), "The Visual System of Trilobites", Palaeontology , 22: 1–22, doi:10.1007/3-540-31078-9_67
- ↑ Aldridge, R. J.; Briggs, D. E. G.; Smith, M. P.; Clarkson, E. N. K.; Clark, N. D. L. (1993). "The anatomy of conodonts". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B. 340 (1294): 405–421. doi:10.1098/rstb.1993.0082.
- ↑ Briggs, D. E. G.; Clarkson, E. N. K.; Aldridge, R. J. (1983). "The conodont animal". Lethaia. 16 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1111/j.1502-3931.1983.tb01993.x.
- ↑ Clarkson, E. N. K. (1998), Invertebrate Paleontology and Evolution (4th ed.), Oxford: Wiley/Blackwell Science, p. 452, ISBN 0-632-05238-4
- ↑ Debrett's authorized biography Archived 2012-09-08 at the Wayback Machine
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
