What Pander (Monographie der fossilen Fische des Silurischen Systems der russisch–baltischen Gouvernements, Akademie der Wissenschaften, St. Petersburg, Vol 91, 1856) had not foreseen was that by claiming his fossils, he would provide the basic principle for biostratigraphy of almost all marine rocks from the Cambrian to the Triassic. Today high-resolution conodont biostratigraphy such as for the Frasnian or Famennian is used worldwide and is hard to be reached on a global scale by other simultaneously occurring fossil groups. Moreover, investigative techniques and applications of conodont studies established in the last century have had an increasing influence on various geoscientific disciplines. Conodont studies not only refer to biostratigraphy but also to extinction events, climate change, palaeobiogeography, and palaeoenvironmental changes. Moreover, they provide useful information in applied sciences such as economic geology in the Central European Variscides and elsewhere.