From S. Turner: conodont debate

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For all of you who are on vertpaleo...DELETE THIS.

For those of you who aren't (especially the conodont workers), this is a
message forwarded by yours truely from Sue Turner at the Queensland Museum.
You can either respond to Sue directly, post to vertpaleo, or post to
Paleonet and I can forward them onto Sue.

Sorry for any kind of duplication that might occur, but I think that there
are many conodont workers out there who are not on vertpaleo that might
have something interesting to say about this debate.
___________________________________________________________________________
Dear all,
I would be interested in peoples' response to the idea currently getting a
lot of media coverage i.e. that conodonts are vertebrates and our earliest
'ancestors', and not only that but they exhibit features of a predatory
lifestyle and have advanced gnathostome characters including the presence
of 'enamel' on their "teeth". As I have been attempting to provide a forum
for debate on this in Ichthyolith Issues, and as one of the world's leading
authorities on early vertebrates, Dr Phil Janvier, has now come out in
favour of the theory, I think it is time for all vertebrate workers and
conodont workers to stand up and be counted and really get to grips with
the meat of the arguments being put forward by Dick Aldridge, Mark Purnell,
Ivan sansom, paul Smith and Moya Smith. There are already several papers
out and more in press refuting their arguments and interpretations but
these do not hit the media because they are not so "sexy". So, what do the
community think.

        Unless stated, any responses may be used in the Ichthyolith Issues
Conodont Corner or sent to the Pander Society for their use.
        Hope to hear and discuss, Sue

Dr Susan Turner, Co-Leader IGCP 328
Honorary Research Fellow
Queensland Museum
P.O. Box 3300
S. Brisbane, Qd 4101
Australia
_____________________________________________________________________________

Once again, sorry for duplications and clogged mailboxes.

Cindy


Cindy Wright
School of Earth and Ocean Science
Box 1700
University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
V8W 2Y2