James on Nostr: Discovering #FossilFriday has reminded me of a time when I was at university, ...
Discovering #FossilFriday has reminded me of a time when I was at university, studying Geology. One of my lecturers was the great, and dearly missed, Dick Aldridge, a world specialist on conodonts.
He started the practical session by saying how conodont elements are fairly common in certain types of rocks of a certain age, but how conodont animals are altogether rarer, with only around 10 known to be in existence. All were discovered since the mid-1980s, after about 200 long years of debate, uncertainty and wild speculation about what the animal could have looked like.
2 were in a museum in Berlin, he said.
3 were in the US.
1 more was somewhere else.
And the other 4 are on those tables over there.
Our jaws dropped. 😆
Gah, I miss those times and those people...
(Disclaimer: The locations and number of conodont animal fossils have probably been misremembered. We're talking 15 years ago here.)
He started the practical session by saying how conodont elements are fairly common in certain types of rocks of a certain age, but how conodont animals are altogether rarer, with only around 10 known to be in existence. All were discovered since the mid-1980s, after about 200 long years of debate, uncertainty and wild speculation about what the animal could have looked like.
2 were in a museum in Berlin, he said.
3 were in the US.
1 more was somewhere else.
And the other 4 are on those tables over there.
Our jaws dropped. 😆
Gah, I miss those times and those people...
(Disclaimer: The locations and number of conodont animal fossils have probably been misremembered. We're talking 15 years ago here.)