A paraclupeid fish (Teleostei, Clupeomorpha, Ellimmichthyiformes) from the Eocene of Monte Bolca: the youngest marine record of double-armored herrings
- Author(s)
- Giorgio Carnevale, Giuseppe Marrama, Alexandre Bannikov, Jürgen Kriwet
- Abstract
Double-armored herrings of the order Ellimmichthyiformes constitute an extinct clade of clupeomorph fishes with a broad paleogeographic and paleoenvironmental distribution in marine, estuarine and freshwater deposits worldwide. This clade comprises more than 40 species spanning from the Early Cretaceous to the Middle Eocene. After the end-Cretaceous mass extinction and until their final extinction, double-armored herrings experienced a drastic drop in their diversity and disparity, with the Paleogene taxa being restricted in the freshwaters of North and South America and China. A new double-armored herring is documented based on a single
partially complete specimen from the Early Eocene Pesciara site of the Monte Bolca Konservat-Lagerstätte, north-eastern Italy. The fossil is characterized by a unique combination of features that supports its recognition as a new genus and species of the family Paraclupeidae, including ornamentation of the skull bones, medial fusion of the contralateral halves of the neural arches of the abdominal vertebrae, presence of teeth on the endopterygoid, parhypural fused to the first preural centrum, presence of a short series of six predorsal scutes increasing in size posteriorly, and postpelvic scutes bearing very prominent spines. The phylogenetic analysis (62 morphological characters coded for 32 taxa) suggests that new paraclupeid taxon from Monte
Bolca documented is closely related to the Early Cretaceous freshwater genus Ellimmichthys from the Western Gondwana rift basins. Moreover, it represents the youngest marine occurrence of the family Paraclupeidae and, more generally, of the order Ellimmichthyiformes, suggesting that the shallow marine biotopes of the western Tethys might have favoured the persistence of certain fish lineages that were severely affected by the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.- Organisation(s)
- Department of Palaeontology
- External organisation(s)
- University of Turin, Russian Academy of Sciences
- Pages
- 79-79
- No. of pages
- 1
- Publication date
- 2018
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 105118 Palaeontology
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 14 - Life Below Water
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/3c909f9b-cfc2-4391-98a3-96a81673f49e