The Great Fossil Enigma Read Online Free PDF Page B

article itself, like all these articles, failed to mention the conodont, a term too arcane for mass consumption. But this reader was sufficiently perceptive to guess: “The newspaper article description sounded like a primitive amphioxus and I'm wondering if there is any relationship to that animal. Also, I'd be interested in knowing if Mr. Melton's find may turn out to be the long-suspected bearer of the conodont. I know that the conodont is thought by many to be a filter-feeding mechanism, and the newspaper account did say that the fossil under investigation has a plankton-straining digestive system.” Some had clearly been hanging on for further details in the popular scientific press. This was certainly the hope of a reader of the San Francisco Chronicle who understood that Melton was the finder and Scott the interpreter of the fossil. Scott answered all the enquiries and put most correspondents on a mailing list for the paper when it was published in 1971. Others asked for his Micropaleontology paper on blebs, which Scott had set up as successfully predicting Melton's find.
    One interesting aspect to this sensation is that there were actually two sensations masquerading under the same façade. One concerned the long-term enigma of the conodont. The other concerned the discovery of a “missing link,” the “missing” suggesting scientific prediction and final resolution in the story of life. The idea of “missing links” had long existed in the popular imagination, most importantly in the search for human origins. It was an easy notion that could translate the arcane into the popular. Of course, the idea that the conodont animal might exist in that ambiguous borderland between vertebrate and invertebrate was also not new. In Scott's youth, if the animal was a worm, it was one with some vertebrate attributes. It was logical, then, to look for vertebrate and invertebrate characters. The truly bizarre nature of the animal did nothing to prevent this, though this way of seeing was entirely due to Scott's belief that this really was the conodont animal. It was those same reasons he had fired at Lange – most notably the presence of single assemblages in each of the animals – which meant these fossils could be nothing other than the animal itself.
    Scott continued to work on the paper, correcting and rewriting sections in the light of the meeting, planning to enter the field on June 24. He had also got a handle on the budget and gave Melton instructions: $400 for a graduate assistant, $400 for expendable equipment and supplies, $1,033 for Melton's salary, $1,000 for food and living, $550 for truck rental, $1,000 “to pay for services rendered to the quarry man,” and $1,000 maximum for the rental of the bulldozer. Scott was now convinced that they could make better progress with a little nitroglycerine: “Believe me, Bill, a man who knows his business could blast that off almost layer by layer; and a great quantity of material could be quickly and readily examined.” He wrote to Jean Lower, who had evidently had had an accident, to wish her well. She responded: “My bruises are healing and the scar tissue is forming – at first my knuckles looked as if they have been completely skinned.” She continued: “The fish and other not yet identified critters (worms and plant material) are coming out rapidly and several specimens which closely resemble our animal but as yet, we have only the one smudge containing three different elements.”
    Their relationship with Allen had not improved. They found themselves told off daily for covering up stacks of his good building stone, stone that Lower and her colleagues could not remember seeing. Horner believed “some guy from Lewistown made off with it.” The complaint meant that they might have to spend days uncovering that stone. Scott, who had formed his opinions on the basis of rumors and personal