Asineops

Asineops
	Asineops squamifrons at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City
Temporal occurrence
	Eocene
Locations
	Green River Formation (USA);
Systematics
	Euteleosteomorpha
	Neoteleostei
	Acanthomorphata
	incertae sedis
	Asineopidae
	Asineops
Scientific name of the family
	Asineopidae
	Wilson, 1980
Scientific name of the genus
	Asineops
	Cope , 1870

Asineops is an extinct bony fish of unclear systematic affiliation. The only species of the genus is Asineops squamifrons . Their fossil remains were found in the North American Green River Formation .

features

Asineops was about 29 to 33 centimeters long and had a stocky body covered with round scales , a broad head with large eyes and a deep cleft mouth. The eyes were relatively large, skull bones and gill covers unarmored. The mouth was covered with thin, brush-like teeth. Fangs were missing. Hard and soft radiating parts of the dorsal fin were not separated. The anal fin had two spiked rays, the dorsal, anal and caudal fins were rounded. The number of Branchiostegal rays was seven. The sideline was continuous.

Systematics

The systematic position of Asineops is so far unclear. It is probably a primitive fish from the group of Acanthomorphata , the fish group with real, unsegmented dorsal and anal fin spines, but since Asineops has no recognizable characteristics of a fish order within the Acanthomorphata, it must be classified as incertae sedis (with unclear assignment) .

literature

Edward Drinker Cope : Observations on the fishes of the Tertiary shales of Green River, Wyoming Territory. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 11, No. 81, Jan., 1869
Karl Albert Frickhinger: Fossils Atlas Fish , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 1999, ISBN 3-88244-018-X
Lance Grande: The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time . University of Chicago Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0226922966

Web links

Commons : Asineops - collection of images, videos and audio files

† Asineops Cope, 1870 in the Paleobiology Database.