80-427: Conodonts ( Greek kōnos , " cone ", + odont , " tooth ") are an extinct group of jawless vertebrates , classified in the class Conodonta . They are primarily known from their hard, mineralised tooth-like structures called "conodont elements" that in life were present in the oral cavity and used to process food. Rare soft tissue remains suggest that they had elongate eel-like bodies with large eyes. Conodonts were
160-622: A "grasping and crushing array". Wear on some conodont elements suggests that they functioned like teeth, with both wear marks likely created by food as well as by occlusion with other elements. Studies have concluded that conodonts taxa occupied both pelagic (open ocean) and nektobenthic (swimming above the sediment surface) niches. The preserved musculature suggests that some conodonts ( Promissum at least) were efficient cruisers, but incapable of bursts of speed. Based on isotopic evidence, some Devonian conodonts have been proposed to have been low-level consumers that fed on zooplankton . A study on
240-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
320-722: A century. It has been hypothesized that the first mechanism of chordate tissue mineralization began either in the oral skeleton of conodonts or the dermal skeleton of early agnathans . The element array constituted a feeding apparatus that is radically different from the jaws of modern animals. They are now termed "conodont elements" to avoid confusion. The three forms of teeth, i.e., coniform cones, ramiform bars, and pectiniform platforms, probably performed different functions. For many years, conodonts were known only from enigmatic tooth-like microfossils (200 micrometers to 5 millimeters in length), which occur commonly, but not always, in isolation and were not associated with any other fossil. Until
400-446: A dorsal or a caudal fin . Some fossil agnathans, such as osteostracans and pituriaspids , did have paired fins, a trait inherited in their jawed descendants . Fertilization in lampreys is external. Mode of fertilization in hagfishes is not known. Development in both groups probably is external. There is no known parental care. Not much is known about the hagfish reproductive process. It is believed that hagfish only have 30 eggs over
480-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
560-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
640-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
720-493: A lifetime. There is very little of the larval stage that characterizes the lamprey. Lamprey are only able to reproduce once. After external fertilization, the lamprey's cloacas remain open, allowing a fungus to enter their intestines, killing them . Lampreys reproduce in freshwater riverbeds, working in pairs to build a nest and burying their eggs about an inch beneath the sediment. The resulting hatchlings go through four years of larval development before becoming adults. Although
800-431: A long gut, more or less homogeneous throughout its length. Lampreys feed on other fish and mammals. Anticoagulant fluids preventing blood clotting are injected into the host, causing the host to yield more blood. Hagfish are scavengers, eating mostly dead animals. They use a row of sharp teeth to break down the animal. Because Agnathan teeth are unable to move up and down it limits their possible food types. In addition to
880-542: A long-lasting group with over 300 million years of existence from the Cambrian (over 500 million years ago) to the beginning of the Jurassic (around 200 million years ago). Conodont elements are highly distinctive to particular species and are widely used in biostratigraphy as indicative of particular periods of geological time. The teeth-like fossils of the conodont were first discovered by Heinz Christian Pander and
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#1732791026801960-409: A minor element of modern marine fauna , agnathans were prominent among the early fish in the early Paleozoic . Two types of Early Cambrian animal apparently having fins, vertebrate musculature, and gills are known from the early Cambrian Maotianshan shales of China : Haikouichthys and Myllokunmingia . They have been tentatively assigned to Agnatha by Janvier. A third possible agnathid from
1040-511: A pair of arched and inward pointing (makellate) M elements. Behind the S-M array lay transversely oriented and bilaterally opposed (pectiniform, i.e. comb-shaped) Pb and Pa elements. Although conodont elements are abundant in the fossil record, fossils preserving soft tissues of conodont animals are known from only a few deposits in the world. One of the first possible body fossils of a conodont were those of Typhloesus , an enigmatic animal known from
1120-630: A phylum with an ever-increasing number of subgroups. With increasingly strong evidence that conodonts lie within the phylum Chordata, more recent studies generally refer to "true conodonts" as the class Conodonta, containing multiple smaller orders. Paraconodonts are typically excluded from the group, though still regarded as close relatives. In practice, Conodonta, Conodontophorida, and Euconodonta are equivalent terms and are used interchangeably. Conodont elements consist of mineralised teeth-like structures of varying morphology and complexity. The evolution of mineralized tissues has been puzzling for more than
1200-473: A proxy for thermal alteration in the host rock, because under higher temperatures, the phosphate undergoes predictable and permanent color changes, measured with the conodont alteration index . This has made them useful for petroleum exploration where they are known, in rocks dating from the Cambrian to the Late Triassic . The conodont apparatus may comprise a number of discrete elements, including
1280-639: A thymus-like lympho-epithelial structure, termed thymoids. VLRB+ cells are B-cell-like, develop in hematopoietic organs, and differentiate into "VLRB antibody"-secreting plasma cells. Conodont (extinct) The taxon contains the subgroups Heterostraci , Astraspida , Arandaspida . Phylogeny based on the work of Mikko Haaramo and Delsuc et al. Hyperotreti / Myxini (hagfishes) Petromyzontomorpha (lampreys) ?† Conodonta † Pteraspidomorpha ?† Jamoytiiformes ?† Euphanerida † Anaspida † Thelodonti † Galeaspida † Pituriaspida † Osteostraci Gnathostomata (vertebrates with jaws) While
1360-469: Is a paraphyletic infraphylum of non- gnathostome vertebrates , or jawless fish , in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata , consisting of both living ( cyclostomes ) and extinct ( conodonts , anaspids , and ostracoderms , among others). Among recent animals , cyclostomes are sister to all vertebrates with jaws , known as gnathostomes . Molecular data , both from rRNA and from mtDNA as well as embryological data, strongly supports
1440-460: Is a simplified cladogram based on Sweet and Donoghue (2001), which summarized previous work by Sweet (1988) and Donoghue et al. (2000): Paraconodontida Cavidonti / Proconodontida Protopanderodontida Panderontida Paracordylodus Balognathidae Prioniodinida Ozarkodinida Only a few studies approach the question of conodont ingroup relationships from a cladistic perspective, as informed by phylogenetic analyses . One of
1520-547: Is a term which has been applied to both the individual fossils and to the animals to which they belonged. The original German term used by Pander was "conodonten", which was subsequently anglicized as "conodonts", though no formal latinized name was provided for several decades. MacFarlane (1923) described them as an order , Conodontes (a Greek translation), which Huddle (1934) altered to the Latin spelling Conodonta. A few years earlier, Eichenberg (1930) established another name for
1600-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
1680-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system
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#17327910268011760-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
1840-506: Is more likely related to biotic interactions , perhaps competition with new Mesozoic taxa. Conodonta taxonomy based on Sweet (1988), Sweet & Donoghue (2001), and Mikko's Phylogeny Archive. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
1920-735: Is no parental care in the Agnatha class. The Agnatha are ectothermic or cold, with a cartilaginous skeleton , and the heart contains 2 chambers. In modern agnathans, the body is covered in skin, with neither dermal or epidermal scales . The skin of hagfish has copious slime glands, the slime constituting their defense mechanism. The slime can sometimes clog up enemy fishes' gills, causing them to die. In direct contrast, many extinct agnathans sported extensive exoskeletons composed of either massive, heavy dermal armour or small mineralized scales. Almost all agnathans, including all extant agnathans , have no paired appendages, although most do have
2000-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
2080-1001: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Agnathans Agnatha ( / ˈ æ ɡ n ə θ ə , æ ɡ ˈ n eɪ θ ə / ; from Ancient Greek ἀ- ( a- ) 'without' and γνάθος ( gnáthos ) 'jaws')
2160-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
2240-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
2320-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with
2400-583: The Bear Gulch limestone in Montana . This possible identification was based on the presence of conodont elements with the fossils of Typhloesus . This claim was disproved, however, as the conodont elements were actually in the creature's digestive area. That animal is now regarded as a possible mollusk related to gastropods . As of 2023, there are only three described species of conodonts that have preserved trunk fossils: Clydagnathus windsorensis from
2480-1116: The Carboniferous aged Granton Shrimp Bed in Scotland , Promissum pulchrum from the Ordovician aged Soom Shale in South Africa , and Panderodus unicostatus from the Silurian aged Waukesha Biota in Wisconsin . There are other examples of conodont animals that only preserve the head region, including eyes, of the animals known from the Silurian aged Eramosa site in Ontario and Triassic aged Akkamori section in Japan . According to these fossils, conodonts had large eyes, fins with fin rays, chevron-shaped muscles and axial line, which were interpreted as notochord or
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2560-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
2640-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
2720-423: The dorsal nerve cord . While Clydagnathus and Panderodus had lengths only reaching 4–5 cm (1.6–2.0 in), Promissum is estimated to reach 40 cm (16 in) in length, if it had the same proportions as Clydagnathus . The "teeth" of some conodonts have been interpreted as filter-feeding apparatuses, filtering plankton from the water and passing it down the throat. Others have been interpreted as
2800-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
2880-412: The "agnatha" Conodonta was indeed jawless, if it would have continued to live, its descendants would still be closer related to e.g. humans than to lampreys, and also contempory it was closer related to the ancestor of humans. Due to such considerations, Agnatha can not be consolidated into a coherent grouping without either removing any non-cyclostomata, or by including all vertebrata thus rendering it into
2960-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
3040-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
3120-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
3200-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
3280-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
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3360-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
3440-878: The P-T extinction during the Early Triassic. Diversity continued to decline during the Middle and Late Triassic, culminating in their extinction soon after the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. Much of their diversity during the Paleozoic was likely controlled by sea levels and temperature, with the major declines during the Late Ordovician and Late Carboniferous due to cooler temperatures, especially glacial events and associated marine regressions which reduced continental shelf area. However, their final demise
3520-428: The absence of jaws , modern agnathans are characterised by absence of paired fins ; the presence of a notochord both in larvae and adults; and seven or more paired gill pouches. Lampreys have a light sensitive pineal eye (homologous to the pineal gland in mammals ). All living and most extinct Agnatha do not have an identifiable stomach or any appendages . Fertilization and development are both external. There
3600-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
3680-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
3760-836: The animals responsible for conodont fossils: Conodontophorida ("conodont bearers"). A few other scientific names were rarely and inconsistently applied to conodonts and their proposed close relatives during 20th century, such as Conodontophoridia, Conodontophora, Conodontochordata, Conodontiformes, and Conodontomorpha. Conodonta and Conodontophorida are by far the most common scientific names used to refer to conodonts, though inconsistencies regarding their taxonomic rank still persist. Bengtson (1976)'s research on conodont evolution identified three morphological tiers of early conodont-like fossils: protoconodonts , paraconodonts , and "true conodonts" (euconodonts). Further investigations revealed that protoconodonts were probably more closely related to chaetognaths (arrow worms) rather than true conodonts. On
3840-463: The broadest studies of this nature was the analysis of Donoghue et al. (2008), which focused on "complex" conodonts (Prioniodontida and other descendant groups): The earliest fossils of conodonts are known from the Cambrian period. Conodonts extensively diversified during the early Ordovician, reaching their apex of diversity during the middle part of the period, and experienced a sharp decline during
3920-408: The earliest conodont-like fossils, the protoconodonts , appear to form a distinct clade from the later paraconodonts and euconodonts . Protoconodonts are probably not relatives of true conodonts, but likely represent a stem group to Chaetognatha , an unrelated phylum that includes arrow worms. Moreover, some analyses do not regard conodonts as either vertebrates or craniates , because they lack
4000-521: The early 1980s, conodont teeth had not been found in association with fossils of the host organism, in a konservat lagerstätte . This is because the conodont animal was soft-bodied, thus everything but the teeth was unsuited for preservation under normal circumstances. These microfossils are made of hydroxylapatite (a phosphatic mineral). The conodont elements can be extracted from rock using adequate solvents. They are widely used in biostratigraphy . Conodont elements are also used as paleothermometers ,
4080-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of
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#17327910268014160-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute
4240-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
4320-501: The genus Panderodus have been speculated to be venomous, based on grooves found on some elements. As of 2012, scientists classify the conodonts in the phylum Chordata on the basis of their fins with fin rays, chevron -shaped muscles and notochord . Milsom and Rigby envision them as vertebrates similar in appearance to modern hagfish and lampreys, and phylogenetic analysis suggests they are more derived than either of these groups. However, this analysis comes with one caveat:
4400-591: The gnathostomes than to the surviving agnathans, known as cyclostomes. Cyclostomes apparently split from other agnathans before the evolution of dentine and bone, which are present in many fossil agnathans, including conodonts . Agnathans declined in the Devonian and never recovered. Approximately 500 million years ago, two types of recombinatorial adaptive immune systems (AISs) arose in vertebrates. The jawed vertebrates diversify their repertoire of immunoglobulin domain-based T and B cell antigen receptors mainly through
4480-422: The hypothesis that both groups of living agnathans, hagfishes and lampreys , are more closely related to each other than to jawed fish , forming the clade Cyclostomi . The oldest fossil agnathans appeared in the Cambrian . Living jawless fish comprise about 120 species in total. Hagfish are considered members of the subphylum Vertebrata , because they secondarily lost vertebrae; before this event
4560-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
4640-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
4720-677: The late Cambrian to the Triassic. Many Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian agnathans were armored with heavy bony-spiky plates. The first armored agnathans—the Ostracoderms , precursors to the bony fish and hence to the tetrapods (including humans )—are known from the middle Ordovician , and by the Late Silurian the agnathans had reached the high point of their evolution. Most of the ostracoderms, such as thelodonts , osteostracans , and galeaspids , were more closely related to
4800-526: The late Ordovician and Silurian, before reaching another peak of diversity during the mid-late Devonian. Conodont diversity declined during the Carboniferous , with an extinction event at the end of the middle Tournaisian and a prolonged period of significant loss of diversity during the Pennsylvanian . Only a handful of conodont genera were present during the Permian, though diversity increased after
4880-472: The main characteristics of these groups. More recently it has been proposed that conodonts may be stem- cyclostomes , more closely related to hagfish and lampreys than to jawed vertebrates . Individual conodont elements are difficult to classify in a consistent manner, but an increasing number of conodont species are now known from multi-element assemblages, which offer more data to infer how different conodont lineages are related to each other. The following
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#17327910268014960-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
5040-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
5120-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
5200-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It
5280-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
5360-413: The other hand, paraconodonts are still considered a likely ancestral stock or sister group to euconodonts. The 1981 Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology volume on the conodonts (Part W revised, supplement 2) lists Conodonta as the name of both a phylum and a class , with Conodontophorida as a subordinate order for "true conodonts". All three ranks were attributed to Eichenberg, and Paraconodontida
5440-405: The population dynamics of Alternognathus has been published. Among other things, it demonstrates that at least this taxon had short lifespans lasting around a month. A study Sr / Ca and Ba /Ca ratios of a population of conodonts from a carbonate platform from the Silurian of Sweden found that the different conodont species and genera likely occupied different trophic niches . Some species of
5520-645: The rearrangement of V(D)J gene segments and somatic hypermutation, but none of the fundamental AIS recognition elements in jawed vertebrates have been found in jawless vertebrates. Instead, the AIS of jawless vertebrates is based on variable lymphocyte receptors (VLRs) that are generated through recombinatorial usage of a large panel of highly diverse leucine-rich-repeat (LRR) sequences. Three VLR genes (VLRA, VLRB, and VLRC) have been identified in lampreys and hagfish, and are expressed on three distinct lymphocytes lineages. VLRA+ cells and VLRC+ cells are T-cell-like and develop in
5600-599: The results published in Saint Petersburg, Russia , in 1856. It was only in the early 1980s that the first fossil evidence of the rest of the animal was found (see below). In the 1990s exquisite fossils were found in South Africa in which the soft tissue had been converted to clay, preserving even muscle fibres. The presence of muscles for rotating the eyes showed definitively that the animals were primitive vertebrates. Through their history of study, "conodont"
5680-566: The same region is Haikouella . A possible agnathid that has not been formally described was reported by Simonetti from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia . Conodonts , a class of agnathans which arose in the early Cambrian, remained common enough until their extinction in the Triassic that their teeth (the only parts of them that were usually fossilized) are often used as index fossils from
5760-444: The spathognathiform, ozarkodiniform, trichonodelliform, neoprioniodiform, and other forms. In the 1930s, the concept of conodont assemblages was described by Hermann Schmidt and by Harold W. Scott in 1934. The feeding apparatus of ozarkodinids is composed of an axial Sa element at the front, flanked by two groups of four close-set elongate Sb and Sc elements which were inclined obliquely inwards and forwards. Above these elements lay
5840-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
5920-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
6000-483: Was also included as an order under Conodonta. This approach was criticized by Fåhraeus (1983), who argued that it overlooked Pander's historical relevance as a founder and primary figure in conodontology. Fåhraeus proposed to retain Conodonta as a phylum (attributed to Pander), with the single class Conodontata (Pander) and the single order Conodontophorida (Eichenberg). Subsequent authors continued to regard Conodonta as
6080-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
6160-505: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
6240-479: Was inferred from molecular and developmental data, the Craniata hypothesis was accepted (and is still sometimes used as a strictly morphological descriptor) to reference hagfish plus vertebrates. Agnathans are ectothermic , meaning they do not regulate their own body temperature. Agnathan metabolism is slow in cold water, and therefore they do not have to eat very much. They have no distinct stomach, but rather
6320-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
6400-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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