Preliminary analysis of early Paleozoic conodonts from the subsurface within and adjacent to the Anadarko basin demonstrates their utility in stratigraphic and thermal evolution studies in the basin. More than 100 samples from 30 drill holes produced conodonts that can be correlated with faunas known from rock sequences exposed along the southern flanks of the basin. For the Middle Ordovician to Devonian, extant biozonations and/or recent published literature based on Oklahoma surface sections allow good biostratigraphic correlation into the subsurface and often allow testing of physical correlations. In contrast, conodonts from the Arbuckle Group (Lower to Middle Ordovician) are less well known. Faunas from the upper half of the group are documented only in unpublished theses, and published faunas are in need of restudy and revision. However, this limited information, along with work in progress in Oklahoma and data from carbonate platform facies elsewhere in North America, still permit correlations into the subsurface with the promise of increasingly improved resolution.
