Editor: Frank H.T. Rhodes
The present volume is the result of a two-day symposium on Conodont Paleozoology, which I organized during the North-Central Sectional Meetings of the Geological Society of America, held in East Lansing, Michigan, during May 1970. The symposium was attended by over 90 micropaleontologists, and included invited papers by specialists from Australia, Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West Germany. The papers included in the present volume represent a selection from those original symposium contributions. Any symposium has two chief purposes: to review existing knowledge on current studies, and to recognize and confront significant questions for which there is at present no satisfactory answer. The aim of a symposium is, thus, both to look back and to look forward: to identify, consolidate and integrate the most relevant results and the more successful methods of current research, and to suggest broad lines of investigation and patterns of analysis for future investigations. The symposium papers in the present volume represent something of a milestone in conodont studies. As recently as three or four years ago, a two-day symposium on conodont paleozoology would have been unthinkable. We could then have summarized our knowledge of the subject by saying that conodonts had an internal-laminated structure and a phosphatic composition, that they originally occurred in multi-element natural assemblages, and that their growing value in biostratigraphy depended on their lack of facies restriction, and their world-wide distribution. It is an indication of the rapid progress of conodont studies that each one of those statements now requires either substantial qualification or supplementation. The papers that follow show how the use of scanning electron microscopy has revolutionized our knowledge (though not yet our understanding) of the internal structure and surface architecture of conodonts. Neutron activation analysis has shown the presence of a whole range of isotopes, some of which may have diagnostic value in phylogenetic studies. Studies in North America, Europe, and Australia have shown the degree to which particular conodonts are controlled by facies, and are geographically restricted. The increasingly widespread recognition of consistent associations between discrete conodont elements has extended the application of provisional multi-element nomenclature, and raised fundamental questions for future taxonomic work. The recognition of detailed evolutionary sequences and homeomorphic trends gives some promise of even more refinement in conodont studies in both stratigraphic and paleoecologic problems. The discovery of remains of a hitherto unknown type of fossil organism associated with conodont assemblages provides a major clue to the nature of the elusive conodont animal that has so long remained elusive that many workers had given up the search to discover it. The papers in the present volume describe these various areas of new knowledge and reflect something of the momentum of current research. They represent a milestone, but not a finished monument. Together they provide an interim report, an indicator of progress to date, and a pointer, providing some direction for subsequent journeys of discovery. They also reveal new problems, emergent doubts, and differences in viewpoint, emphasis, and tactics, which mark healthy and vigorous involvement in the scientific quest.
Published: 6/29/1973
ISBN Number: 0813721415
Pages: 306
Product Category: EBooks