Research

Conodonts

1.        A calcareous rock sample has to be cut into small pieces of about egg size.
2.-4.    The sample is dissolved by acid.
5.-8.    Undissolved residues of the sample are washed and sifted.
9.-11.  The residues are inspected under a binocular microscope in order to pick up conodonts.
12.      The conodonts of the sample are stored in a 12mm bowl of a micro-slide.

Different conodont forms make up one apparatus which on the whole can – very rarely! – be found in rocks. Transparent fotos from the conodont fragments of both, of the rock surface and of its counter surface (the two fotos in the upper row), are composed in one projection. Thus, the images of the fragments from both surfaces fit together within a two-dimensional plan of the apparatus. Finally, after empiric studies of different apparatus discoveries, a three-dimensional model can be concluded (last figure of the lower row; this model after Purnell et al. 1995).  

The historically first conodont specimen with documentation of soft tissue from the Scottish Lower Carboniferous (Granton Shrimp Bed). – Left: The colour image by courtesy of Dr. R.J. Aldridge, Leicester, England (conodont body is dyed in blue). – Middle: The corresponding graphical interpretation shows the body and in magnification its anterior part (on the right as it is documented on the rock surface, on the left as a mirror image of the counter surface). – Right: The conodont animal after ideas of Purnell et al. (1995: text-fig. 3, here reproduced).