The Great Fossil Enigma Read Online Free

questioned would be a new truck.” Scott now planned to join Melton in the field in the summer of 1970. Melton was already there and had turned up tiny objects he thought might be younger stages of the animal. Meanwhile, Scott continued to work on the technical details of their report. He told Rhodes that its assemblage and therefore its name was Lochriea wellsensis. This, of course, was the illegal terminology Scott had invented that, apparently outside Scott's field of vision, was already being disassembled by the likes of Bergström, Sweet, Lindström, and others. However, the final battle in that distant war had yet to be won. Scott wondered if the separate system he had invented might be carried throughout the classification. Perhaps Eichenberg's Conodontophorida could be kept for the isolated fossils, while his animals might be known and grouped by a separate system. The conodont animals might be known as Lochriates. Scott was perhaps aware that he was being led by his heart on this matter but asked Rhodes for his opinion all the same. Never once did he consider using Pander's “Conodonta.”. It was probably at Melton's suggestion that they considered calling the animal Panderi Rhodesi , but Scott thought that impossible.

    As the animal was being shaped in Michigan, across the Atlantic Maurits Lindström was in the rather impossible position of writing a paper on the affinities of the conodont animal for the East Lansing meeting. Rhodes had just told him that Scott possessed “what must be very seriously considered the probable conodont animal.” 14 Lindström asked Scott for “inside information,” aware that he might, for good reasons, not wish to give it. Scott sent him the same few lines he had sent others. Although Lindström was not disappointed, it was hardly enough to help him. All he could do was work from the long-known fossils, telling Scott, “What you are telling me in your letter sounds quite fascinating and will no doubt create great sensation.” Scott, doubtless feeling the weight of expectation, now planned an “elaborate display including three-dimensional models” around which participants would engage in open debate about the animal. He never doubted that the animal would be accepted and that all would share in the triumph. He asked Rhodes if he might speak for longer so as to fully describe the animal. This was indeed to be a moment of sensation.
    Scott and Melton's world was, however, enclosed and invisible. Beyond it, speculation about the animal continued, and it was not based on the specimens shown at the convention. Nevertheless, it was with some surprise that Scott read of an ongoing debate about the animal in the December issue of Science. This centered on some extraordinary photographs that had appeared in the magazine the previous January. Published by Rupert Riedl, a zoologist at the University of North Carolina, they showed conodont-like structures in poorly known animals called Gnathostomulida. These animals had previously been off the paleontologists’ radar, but when they saw the pictures many immediately thought they saw a solution to the great mystery. Some wrote to Riedl, others to Science. Chris Durden at Texas Memorial Museum in Austin and John Rogers at Yale, for example, were quite convinced by the similarities. Perhaps conodonts belonged to the same group of animals? Durden imagined them as bottom-dwelling “worms,” the conodont elements forming the cores of papillae used to tear up algal mats and fungal hyphae. Both Durden and Rogers recognized that there were significant differences, particularly in size and chemistry, but were nevertheless convinced by the morphological similarities. Riedl was elated by the response and admitted that he too had pondered the conodont connection but felt unqualified to comment. Now he thought these imaginings justified, aided by Durden's reference to an obscure paper by Wetzel,