Pathological Conodont?!

[Mediospirifer]

I have a few dozen conodonts that I'm in the process of photographing and mounting for storage. Among my collection, I have several Polygnathus linguiformis examples.

Last night, I mounted two P. linguiformis on my "Conodonts II" storage card. This one caught my attention:

That pale growth on the underside struck me as odd, especially compared to the other P. linguiformis that I handled last night:

So I went to look at the P. linguiformis that I'd previously mounted. Here are 3 of the 4 for comparison:

I also looked at the page in "Conodonts from the Genesee Formation in Western New York" that shows a number of P. linguiformis for further comparison. While several show liplike growths on the back, none are quite as pronounced as the first specimen I showed here.

I'd be curious to see what other collectors think about this set. Do I have a pathology, or is this an element from a really old individual?

[Socket]

Its a basal body which isn't always preserved/attached. The correct terminology will come to me... I had a sample full of palmatolepids with their bases still attached but all the other surrounding samples lacked it. Ill try to find a photo...

Edit: dont think I can find any pics on this computer that clearly show it. But you can see a small light outline of the basal body through the conodont to the right.

Edited March 2, 2014 by Socket

[Mediospirifer]

Its a basal body which isn't always preserved/attached. The correct terminology will come to me... I had a sample full of palmatolepids with their bases still attached but all the other surrounding samples lacked it. Ill try to find a photo...

Edit: dont think I can find any pics on this computer that clearly show it. But you can see a small light outline of the basal body through the conodont to the right.

Interesting! So it's not a pathology, it's unusually good preservation. Sounds good to me!

Thanks for the identification.

By the way, your photo doesn't have enough resolution for me to see the basal body. I can't get a larger size than thumbnail.