An ichthyolith (from

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, “fish“ and ”stone”, “rock“, literally "

fish Fish are Aquatic animal, aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack Limb (anatomy), limbs with Digit (anatomy), digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as we ...

- rock") is any disarticulated remains of a fish found in the

fossil record A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

, most often a scale, denticle or

tooth A tooth ( : teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores and omnivores, also use teeth to help with capturing or wounding prey, ...

. The term was coined by Doyle, Kennedy and Riedel (1974) to denote 'fish skeletal debris'. The term 'stratignathy', proposed in the same paper for the time relationships of ichthyoliths, did not gain currency.

References

Prehistoric fish Fossil record of animals {{paleo-fish-stub