Cimolichthys
| Cimolichthys | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Fossil of Cimolichthys nepaholica in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Albium (Lower Cretaceous) to Campanium (Upper Cretaceous) | ||||||||||||
| 112.9 to 72 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the family | ||||||||||||
| Cimolichthyidae | ||||||||||||
| Goody , 1969 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Cimolichthys | ||||||||||||
| Leidy , 1857 |
Cimolichthys is an extinct genus of fish from the order of the lizard fish relatives (Aulopiformes) that lived in the Cretaceous Period . So far, two species of the genus have been described, the type C. levesiensis , whose fossils come from Western European chalk formations , and C. nepaholica whose fossils were found in North America.
features
Cimolichthys was a large predatory fish that reached a maximum length of two meters. The genus had a long, streamlined body and a narrow head with a pointed muzzle. Both jaws were set with sharp teeth. A series of small bone shields stretched along the sidelines. Larger bone shields lay on the front back from the head to the dorsal fin. The caudal fin was very large and forked.
Systematics
Today, Cimolichthys is the only genus of the monotypical family Cimolichthyidae of the order of the lizardfish relatives (Aulopiformes). Together with the related and also extinct Enchodontidae , Peter C. Goody placed them in the suborder Cimolichthyoidei. Joseph S. Nelson , author of the standard work on fish systematics Fishes of the World , places both extinct families together with five recent families of lizardfish relatives in the suborder Alepisauroidei.
literature
- Peter C. Goody: The Cretaceous Teleostean Fish Cimolichthys from the Niobrara Formation of Kansas and the Pierre Shale of Wyoming. American Museum Novitates, No. 2434 October 1970, PDF
- Karl Albert Frickhinger: Fossils Atlas Fish , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 1999, ISBN 3-88244-018-X
- Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World . John Wiley & Sons, 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7
