New group of the Early Palaeozoic conodont-like fossils

The paper is devoted to the Upper Cambrian and Tremadocian organophosphatic microfossils which were hitherto treated as conodonts and assigned mainly to the genera Coelocerodontus and Viirodus. Individual elements of the fossils, similarly to the elements of conodonts, belonged originally to the multi-element apparatuses. Present studies, based mainly on the collections from Sweden, Poland (core sections), Estonia and Kazakhstan, show that despite the similarities of their individual elements to conodonts, they significantly differ from them in the inner structure, as well as in the construction of the apparatuses composed of them. Elements of their apparatuses are matched in shape to each other and certainly functioned in conjunction, while those belonging to the euconodont apparatuses are usually differentiated in shape and usually functioned in separation. All fossils of this group are provisionally named coelocerodonts in this paper. Their individual elements, as well as the apparatuses composed of them, are similar in construction to those of the genus Phakelodus, which is an ancestor of chaetognaths.