Caturidae
| Caturidae | ||||||||||||
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Caturus furcatus in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Ladinian (Middle Triassic) to Albian (Lower Cretaceous) | ||||||||||||
| 237 to 99.6 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Caturidae | ||||||||||||
| Stensio , 1932 |
The Caturidae are a family of extinct bony fish from the order of the bowfin fish (Amiiformes). They lived in the Mesozoic (Mesozoic). Fossils have been found in Europe, North America, China and Tunisia before.
features
The Caturidae were predatory fish that could reach body lengths of about ten centimeters to almost two meters ( Caturus giganteus ). The vertebrae of the Caturidae did not have calcified vertebral centers, but calcifications in the neural arches . Some vertebrae were diplospondyl, i.e. that is, they had two vertebral centers, one dorsal and one ventral hemicentra. The vertebral and hemal arches in the area of the tail fin stalk were almost horizontally aligned. The hemi arches were wide and spade-shaped in the transverse plane. Adult fish had some (> 2) Urodermalia .
The maxillary was slender and rod-shaped, the jaws set with sharp, flattened teeth. The Branchiostegal rays were numerous (22 or more). The eye was protected by a bone ring and one or two suborbitalia.
While the caudal fin of the other Amiiformes was rounded, that of the Caturidae was forked. In the caudal fin skeleton, there were some epurals (elongated, free-standing bones) and some hypuralia supported many fin rays . The anal fin had 11 to 13 unbranched and 14 to 16 branched rays.
External system
The caturidae form with the amiidae that today only by the Bowfin are represented, and two other extinct families from the Mesozoic , the Liodesmidae and Asian Sinamiidae the order of the arch-finned (Amiiformes). The Caturidae, the Liodesmidae and the Sinamiidae lived mainly in the sea, while the Amiidae are mainly freshwater inhabitants.
Genera
- Amblysemius, Caturus, Furo
literature
- Robert L. Carroll : Paleontology and Evolution of the Vertebrates. Thieme, Stuttgart et al. 1993, ISBN 3-13774-401-6 .
- Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World. 4th edition. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7 .
- Melanie LJ Stiassny, Lynne R. Parenti, G. David Johnson (Eds.): Interrelationships of Fishes. Academic Press, San Diego CA et al. 1996, ISBN 0-12-670950-5 , Google Books .
