conodont and ichthyolith apatite

[wriedel@xxxxxxxx (William Riedel 619-534-4386)]

Hi, Cindy and Clive and D.L Clark:
                                    I don't know anything about how isotopes 
and REE act in conodonts and fish teeth, but I'm always interested in 
promoting ichthyoliths as research material - we have a lot of them in our 
Scripps cores, and DSDP and ODP cores are even better sources.
        When one talks about ichthyoliths in general, the term includes bone 
fragments and scales, as well as teeth of varying degrees of "density", or 
"robustness" or whatever you'd like to call it.  I would imagine that the 
most robust teeth are much less prone to diagenetic changes than the less 
robust scales and bone fragments.  I'm most familiar with Cenozoic and late 
Mesozoic assemblages, but people like Linda Tway (now a visiting scholar 
here at Scripps) have worked on Paleozoic ichthyoliths.  Questions about 
ichthyoliths we might be able to answer.  Conodonts not.
                                                Bill R.
W. Riedel
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
UCSD
La Jolla, CA 92093-0220

wriedel@ucsd.edu
phone (619) 534-4386
fax   (619) 534-0784