Dinosaurs, Birds, Feathers, and Conodonts (Oh, My!)

Most of the readers of this blog are intelligent, interested, scientifically literate individuals, but I'm guessing that at least a few of you aren't familiar with one of the nouns in the title. Those of you who do know what a conodont is are probably wondering what it has to do with the others. If you bear with me for a little bit, the connection will be clear shortly. It has to do with fossils, fossilization, and the latest spectacular misunderstanding of those two things at Uncommon Descent.

Conodonts are (or, rather, were) an interesting group of animals. They were around from late in the Cambrian period until the end of the Triassic, and were quite common during most of the period. They're not well known to most people outside of geology because the vast bulk of the evidence we have for them consists of very tiny tooth-like fossils. Most are only a millimeter or two in size, and are very hard to see without a microscope. They've received a lot of attention from paleontologists over the years because they're very useful little critters, particularly for geologists who work in the oil and gas industry. The thing is, for a long time nobody knew just what sort of critters they actually were.

[ Read more (at The Questionable Authority, where comments may be left):](http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/09/dinosaurs_birds_feathers_and_c.php)