Leedsichthys problematicus
| Leedsichthys problematicus | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Reconstructed life picture Leedsichthys problematicus |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Middle and Upper Jurassic | ||||||||||||
| 166.1 to 152.1 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Leedsichthys | ||||||||||||
| Woodward , 1889 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Leedsichthys problematicus | ||||||||||||
| Woodward , 1889 |
Leedsichthys problematicus is an extinct bony fish , the fossils of which were found in sea deposits from the Middle and Upper Jurassic around 165 to 155 million years old. The name "Leedsichthys" means "Leeds' fish", after the fossil collector Alfred Leeds, who discovered the first fossils in 1889 near Peterborough in England . Thetaxon got the epithet “problematicus” because determining the size was so difficult.
features
Leedsichthys belongs to the Pachycormidae , extinct ray fins with an only partially ossified skeleton. The spine in particular consisted for the most part of cartilage that has not been preserved in fossil form. Since the remains that were found have crumbled heavily and no complete specimen has been found, it is difficult to determine the exact length of the animal. Leedsichthys problematicus could have been the longest fish in the history of the earth ; older estimates are 27.6 meters; more recent studies assume that the fish reached a length of 9 meters by the age of 20 and could have been 16.5 meters long by the age of 38. The pectoral fin is said to have been 2.30 to 3 meters long, a single part of the homocercan caudal fin 1.80 to 2 meters high. For comparison: the largest recent fish is the whale shark , the longest specimen measured was 13.7 meters long.
Way of life
As the whale shark feeding on leedsichthys of plankton , which by means of a filtering apparatus in the mouth and in the gills was filtered out of the water absorbed.
Systematics
Leedsichthys problematicus belongs to a monophyletic clade of large marine, filtering plankton-eaters within the extinct Pachycormidae that lived from the Middle Jurassic to the Upper Cretaceous . The Pachycormidae belong to the real bony fish (Teleostei).
literature
- Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World. John Wiley & Sons, 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7 .
- Matt Friedman et al .: 100-Million-Year Dynasty of Giant Planktivorous Bony Fishes in the Mesozoic Seas. In: Science . 327 (5968), 2010, pp. 990-993. doi: 10.1126 / science.1184743
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c J. Liston, M. Newbrey, T. Challands, C. Adams: Growth, age and size of the Jurassic pachycormid Leedsichthys problematicus (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii) . (PDF; 7.0 MB). In: G. Arratia, H. Schultze, M. Wilson (Eds.): Mesozoic Fishes 5 - Global Diversity and Evolution. Publishing house Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-89937-159-8 , pp. 145–175.