To do this, the scientists searched for conodont microfossils—extinct eel-like creatures whose remains can be used to constrain and identify geological time periods.

A superbly preserved discrete element conodont fauna has been recovered from carbonate concretions from the upper Desmoinesian (Pennsylvanian) Excello Shale at two localities in south-central Iowa.

Chemical nature of the 3.4 Ga Strelley Pool microfossils. Geochemical Perspectives Letters, 2018; 37 DOI: 10.7185/geochemlet.1817 ...

Wear, tear and systematic repair: testing models of growth dynamics in conodonts with high-resolution imaging. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018; 285 (1886): 20181614 ...

They utilized recent data from the same area on conodonts, another extinct marine creature, to place their work in the context of standard Permian timescales.

The distinctive conodont fauna now known from the Dutchtown formation appears to further substantiate the validity of this stratigraphic unit as proposed by McQueen in 1937. A portion of this conodont ...

In order to analyze these microfossils, a pioneering method of analysis has been developed by a research team led by Akizumi Ishida from Tohoku University, in collaboration with experts from the ...

Microfossils have a tendency to muck with our timeline of when life formed on Earth. As their name suggests, these ancient rocks contain the tiny fossilized remains of protists and bacteria, and ...

Fast-forward 70 years, and new microfossils have pushed that timeline well into the Archean Eon. Most assume that the first cells were likely simpler than the 1 to 2 micrometer-wide bacteria we ...