Phareodus
| Phareodus | ||||||||||||
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Phareodus testis fossil in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin . |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Eocene | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Phareodus | ||||||||||||
| Leidy , 1873 | ||||||||||||
Phareodus ( Syn .: Dapedoglossus COPE, 1877) is an extinct, fish genus from the family of the osteoglossids (Osteoglossidae). Fossils assigned to the genus have been found in North America, Eastern Australia, and China. Like the recent bones, Phareodus was a predatory freshwater fish .
features
Phareodus was relatively large and could reach a length of 30 to 50 cm. Compared to recent bones, the species was much higher back and its caudal fin was not rounded, but forked. This was supported by 17 main fin rays, 15 of which were branched. As with other extinct bones, the frontal was relatively wide and had a particularly pronounced edge above the eye sockets. The jaws were set with long, strong and pointed teeth.
Systematics
The type species of the genus was described in 1871 by the American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope as Osteoglossum encaustum . In 1873 his colleague Joseph Leidy classified five lower jaw fragments of a similar fish under the name Phareodus acutus . A short time later, Cope described another fossil species of bones under a new generic name ( Dapedoglossus testis Cope, 1877) and also assigned O. encaustum to the new genus. Due to the priority rule in biological nomenclature , the name Phareodus has established itself .
Valid species of the genus are:
- Phareodus encaustus Cope, 1871, from the North American Green River Formation .
- Phareodus testis Cope, 1877, from the North American Green River Formation. Type species of the genus.
- Phareodus queenslandicus Hills, 1934, from the Eocene of Queensland, Australia.
- Phareodus songziensis Zhang, 2003, from the Eocene from Hubei (China) (since the head has not been preserved, it is uncertain whether the species can really be assigned to Phareodus . It could also belong to another high-backed genus of bones, e.g. the Indonesian genus Musperia or Taverneichthys from India.)
literature
- Karl Albert Frickhinger: Fossils Atlas Fish , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 1999, ISBN 3-88244-018-X
- Li Guo-Qing, Lance Grande & Mark VH Wilson: The species of † Phareodus (Teleostei: Osteoglossidae) from the Eocene of North America and their phylogenetic relationships. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Sep. 4, 1997), pp. 487-505
- Louis Taverne: New insights on the osteology and taxonomy of the osteoglossid fishes Phareodus, Brychaetus and Musperia (Teleostei, Osteoglossomorpha). Bulletin de l'Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belqique, Sciences de la Terre, 79: 175-190, Brussels, October 31, 2009, ISSN 0374-6291 .
Web links
- † Phareodus Leidy 1873 in the Paleobiology Database.