I’ve added your blog to my blogroll.

What I meant to say was that finding a second complete specimen would provide no new morphological information for classification purposes, but you are correct, new specimens can provide new stratigraphic or geographic information.

Once we have a complete secimen, finding another one does not provide any new information.

It might. For example it might provide information about the geographic distribution of the species (depending on where it was found) or the temporal distribution (if it was found in a different strata). Also, even complete specimens may have been deformed by geolgic processes or may not be entirely clear because of the way they were lain when fossilized, and a separate complete specimen may provide that information.

Maybe I’m being overly pedantic here.

Firstly. you are correct, most fossils that are found are incompete, but this is generally enough to classify the fossil to a specific group, or genus. Once enough diagnostic material has been collected to reconstruct the organism, or a complete specimen is found, a “type” specimen is described and published. Future fragmentary finds can then be compared with the “type” specimen. Often it is only necessary to find a fragment of the organism, provided that the fragment contains diagnostic features that identify the fragment as belonging to a particular species.

For example, here is the “type” specimen for Anomalocaris briggsi from the Lower Cambrian of South Australia. Anomalocarids have similar bodies, and the diagnistic features of each species are the frontal appendages. So therefor it is only necessary to find the appendages to identify the species. The body is not necessary. Indeed the “type”: specimen of A. briggsi is an appendage, as that is the diagnostic feature which identifies the species. Should the body be found, it will add to the suite of diagnostic characters for A. briggsi.

Fragmentary finds often provide more information that a complete specimen. Once we have a complete secimen, finding another one does not provide any new information. However, fragmentary remains can provide information on the organism, for example did the material tear, snap or fracture.

As to dating, if the fossils are found in close association with rocks that can be dated directly, then an absolute age cam be given (in millions of years). If not, then the deposits can be relatively dated (e.g. Permian age, Cretaceous age) by any associated fossils that have been identified and dated elsewhere, and/or correlated stratigraphically and palaeontologically with rocks elswhere that have absolute ages.

I had to do a double-take too, but reading carefully, its clear Wes is referring specifically to conodonts and not to fossils in general. Maybe “fossil remains of this group known” would be a tad more clear than “fossil remains known”, but the original is fine. But that’s just me. You could also argue that that’s being redundant.

Of course, fossils of other sorts for other groups existed prior to 1983, but I clearly was not talking about those.

Did you really mean to say this ?