Dipterus
| Dipterus | ||||||||||||
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Fossil of Dipterus valenciennesi in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Devon | ||||||||||||
| 397.5 to 360.7 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Dipterus | ||||||||||||
| Sedgwick & Murchison , 1829 |
Dipterus ( Syn .: Catopterus , Eoctenodus , Pardipterus , Polyphractus ) is an extinct genus of lungfish (Dipnoi) from the middle and upper Devonian . Dipterus was the first lungfish to be scientifically described several years before the recent South American lungfish was discovered and describedin 1837.
features
Dipterus were small fish with a slender body covered by rounded, roof-tile-like scales. The head was narrow, the eyes relatively large, the mouth pointed. The skull had an intricate arrangement of small bones around the eyes and on the jaws. The edges of the jaw were toothless. As with later lungfish, there were a pair of large chewing plates coated with strongly mineralized dentin in the middle of the palate. They probably served as a breaker for hard-shell food. Before that, there were smaller tooth-like structures. Dipterus is the oldest lungfish to have cranial ribs, which suggests that it has already breathed air.
Both dorsal fins sat far back, just before the caudal fin. The first dorsal fin was smaller than the second. Both sat on a meaty stick. The caudal fin was heterocerk , right in front of her was a small anal fin. The ventral and pectoral fins were narrow, elongated and pointed at the end. Its long central part was muscular and supported by symmetrically arranged bones.
Dipterus lived in fresh water and was carnivorous ( carnivorous ).
literature
- Karl Albert Frickhinger: Fossils Atlas Fishes. Mergus-Verlag, Melle 1999, ISBN 3-88244-018-X .
- Michael J. Benton : Paleontology of the vertebrates. 2007, ISBN 3899370724 , p. 80.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b John A. Long: The Rise of Fishes . Page 174, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, ISBN 0801849926