Chondrenchelyidae
| Chondrenchelyidae | ||||||||||||
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Lower Carboniferous ( Mississippium ) | ||||||||||||
| 345 to 318 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the order | ||||||||||||
| Chondrenchelyiformes | ||||||||||||
| Moy-Thomas , 1939 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the family | ||||||||||||
| Chondrenchelyidae | ||||||||||||
| Berg , 1940 |
The Chondrenchelyidae ((Gr.) Enchelys = "eel" - also: cartilage eels) are a family of small cartilaginous fish that only lived in the Lower Carboniferous and then died out. Family fossils have been found in Europe and North America, including in Bear Gulch limestone .
External system
The Chondrenchelyidae are the only family of the order Chondrenchelyiformes that belongs to the cartilaginous fish subclass Holocephali . They are probably related to the recent sea cats (Chimaeriformes), with which they are united in the superorder Holocephalimorpha that carries the tooth plates .
features
The genera of the Chondrenchelyidae were only 10 to 15 cm long. They had an elongated body, pointed at the back, which was surrounded by a fin edge consisting of dorsal, caudal and anal fin that had grown together. Her head was elongated, her eyes relatively large, her mouth slightly below. Characteristic of the family are the two-lined pectoral fins, on the central cartilaginous axis of which radials sat on both sides. They correspond to the archipterygium of all paired fins demanded by Carl Gegenbaur - this theory (with which he wanted to derive the fins from gill arches) had not long been abandoned. The "archeology" (as in Neoceratodus forsteri ) are adaptations to crawling around in the phytal .
Genera
literature
- Karl A. Frickhinger: Fossil Atlas of Fish , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 1999, ISBN 3-88244-018-X
Web links
- The Paleobiology Database: Chondrenchelyidae