Protopanderodontida
| Protopanderodontida Temporal range: Descendant taxa Panderodontida and Prioniodontida survive to the Middle Devonian and Late Triassic, respectively | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Subphylum: | Vertebrata |
| Infraphylum: | Agnatha |
| Class: | †Conodonta |
| Clade: | †Euconodonta |
| Order: | †Protopanderodontida Sweet, 1988 |
| Synonyms | |
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Protopanderodontida is an order of conodonts which lived from the Furongian (Late Cambrian) to the Wenlock (mid-Silurian). They had a relative simple apparatus with several pairs of coniform elements (single-cusped tooth-like structures) in the mouth, lacking the more elaborate arrangements found in "complex conodonts" (Prioniodontida).
Protopanderodontids were a common component of Ordovician conodont faunas, and were probably a grade ancestral to later conodonts in the orders Panderodontida and Prioniodontida. They may have been the earliest conodonts with an odd number of elements in the jaw. A single median symmetrical element (the S0 element) is found at the midline of the apparatus, potentially originating from a fusion of paired coniform elements in an earlier ancestor. The only putative protopanderodontid to preserve an articulated partial apparatus is Besselodus arcticus, from the Late Ordovician of Greenland.