Saurichthyidae
| Saurichthyidae | ||||||||||||
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Saurichthys fossil in the Museo Civico dei Fossili in Besano . |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Triassic to Lower Jurassic | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the order | ||||||||||||
| Saurichthyiformes | ||||||||||||
| Aldinger , 1937 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the family | ||||||||||||
| Saurichthyidae | ||||||||||||
| Stensio , 1925 |
The Saurichthyidae are an extinct family of fish whose representatives lived during the Triassic and Lower Jurassic . They were widespread, elongated predatory fish with torpedo-shaped bodies, beak-like, elongated jaws, and conical teeth. They were 40 to 180 centimeters long. The dorsal and anal fins sat far back, symmetrically opposite each other. The caudal fin was externally homocerk . The scale dress was reduced to four rows of ganoid scales .
As an exceptionally well-preserved fossil of Saurichthys curionii from the Central Triassic, Swiss fossil deposit Monte San Giorgio shows, the strong lengthening of the body of the Saurichthyidae took place in a unique way. In other fish, this takes place either through a stretching of the vertebrae or through the development of additional vertebrae and the muscle segments associated with them . In contrast, the Saurichthyidae did not have one vertebral arch per muscle segment, but two.
The Saurichthyidae resembled today's pike and garfish and, like them, were probably shock predators who lay in wait for their prey and then captured them in a rapid advance.
The family Saurichthyidae systematically belongs to the cartilage organoids (Chondrostei), the only recent representatives of which are the sturgeon-like (Acipenseriformes).
Internal system
- Saurichthyiformes
- Acidorhynchus Stensio, 1925
- Saurichthyidae
- Brevisaurichthys Beltan, 1972
- Eosaurichthys Liu & Wei, 1988
- Saurichthys Agassiz, 1834
- Saurorhynchus Reis, 1892
- Sinosaurichthys Wu, et al. 2011
- Systolichthys Beltan, 1972
gallery
Saurichthys curionii from Ticino (Switzerland) in the Natural History Museum in Lugano
Saurichthys in the Museo Civico dei Fossili in Besano
Saurichthys in the Museo Civico dei Fossili in Besano
literature
- Robert L. Carroll : Paleontology and Evolution of the Vertebrates. Thieme, Stuttgart et al. 1993, ISBN 3-13-774401-6 .
- Karl Albert Frickhinger: Fossil Atlas of Fishes. Mergus, Verlag für Natur- und Heimtierkunde Baensch, Melle 1999, ISBN 3-88244-018-X .
- Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World. 4th edition. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erin E. Maxwell et al. 2013. Exceptional fossil preservation demonstrates a new mode of axial skeleton elongation in early ray-finned fishes. Nature Communications 4, article number: 2570; doi: 10.1038 / ncomms3570
Web links
- Palæos Saurichthyidae
- The Paleobiology Database: Saurichthyidae Stensiö, 1925