Sweetognathus

{{Short description|Extinct genus of jawless fishes}}

{{Automatic taxobox

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| taxon = Sweetognathus

| authority = Clark, 1972Early Permian crisis and its bearing on Permo-Triassic conodont taxonomy. DL Clark, Geologica et Palaeontologica, 1972

| subdivision_ranks = Species

| subdivision =

• †Sweetognathus asymmetrica
• †Sweetognathus expansus
• †Sweetognathus merrelli
• †Sweetognathus subsymmetricus
• †Sweetognathus whitei

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Sweetognathus is an extinct genus of conodonts in the family Sweetognathidae that evolved at the beginning of the Permian period (298.9 Ma), in near-equatorial, shallow-water seas.{{Cite journal|last1=Petryshen|first1=W.|last2=Henderson|first2=C. M.|last3=De Baets|first3=K.|last4=Jarochowska|first4=E.|date=2020-11-25|title=Evidence of parallel evolution in the dental elements of Sweetognathus conodonts|journal=Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences|volume=287|issue=1939|pages=20201922|doi=10.1098/rspb.2020.1922|pmid=33203328|pmc=7739493|doi-access=free}}

The genus is characterized by pustulose ornamentation on a wide, flat-topped carina. It originated in the earliest Permian as S. expansus from Diplognathodus edentulus.Evolution and distribution of the conodonts Sweetognathus and Iranognathus and related genera during the Permian, and their implications for climate change. S Mei, CM Henderson, BR Wardlaw - Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, 2002 Sweetognathus forms a species complex.The Sweetognathus complex in the Permian of China: implications for evolution and homeomorphy. W Cheng-Yuan, SM Ritter… - Journal of Paleontology, 1987 The genus is named after paleontologist Walter C. Sweet.

Recurrent parallel species pairs have occurred throughout Sweetognathus evolution between populations originating in Bolivia, the Midwestern United States, and Russia. Parallelisms have been found to occur in the denticle morphologies of their platform elements.