Many outside of the field of paleontology are likely unfamiliar with the term conodonts, which describes fossilized, cone-shaped teeth from ancient animals who died out at the end of the Triassic Period.
Many outside of the field of paleontology are likely unfamiliar with the term conodonts, which describes fossilized, cone-shaped teeth from ancient animals who died out at the end of the Triassic Period. According to Dr. Charles Henderson, PhD, who studies conodonts in the Department of Geoscience, and many other researchers, the millimetre-sized teeth are the “most useful fossils in the world.”
Henderson, PhD student David Terrill, and Dr. Jason Anderson in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine are co-authors on a new research paper published in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry that uncovers the origin of these mysterious and abundant fossils.
Conodonts occur in almost any marine rock across the world, from China to Iran to the Arctic.
“Since distinctive forms are found everywhere in a certain range of time, we can use them as an evolutionary time clock,” Henderson explains. “As soon as you can tell time, you can answer a lot of different kinds of problems in geology. If you want to learn about mountain building or extinctions, you need to know something about the age of the rocks. If you want to explore for oil and gas, the presence of conodonts can be used to identify the best levels of rock for exploration, for example in the Lower Triassic Montney Formation.”
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Image via University of Calgary.
