Fossil fish armour?

[Bradley Flynn]

I photographed this fossil this morning, not sure what it could be. It seems fishy. though. 

Witteberg group

Witpoort formation

Late Devonian

I did measure the specimen at 20mm x 20mm

[Bradley Flynn]

[Bradley Flynn]

Fossils on the right are from same location. Not the best pictures, but the best I have. 

[Bradley Flynn]

I'm thinking, Placoderm armour plate. 

[jdp]

The first is an actinopterygian skull roof. Not clear to me what the second is.

[jdp]

By the way, as far as I know, there are no known actinopterygian fossils from the Devonian of South Africa, so this is scientifically important.

[Bradley Flynn]

@jdp this would be awesome if it is in fact a skull element of an actinopterygian sp. Do you have any references material I could compare this specimen to? Thanks for your help

[jdp]

Here are a few open-access publications figuring early actinopt skulls:

 

Raynerius: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2015.1485

 

cf Ligulalepis: https://elifesciences.org/articles/34349

 

 

Also figure 18 here:

 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256078050_Revision_of_the_actinopterygian_genus_Mimipiscis_Mimia_from_the_Upper_Devonian_Gogo_Formation_of_Western_Australia_and_the_interrelationships_of_early_Actinopterygii/figures?lo=1

[jdp]

The person to get in touch with about this would be Robert Gess at the Albany Museum in Grahamstown.

[jdp]

So I was a little wrong when I said no actinopt material was known from South Africa. There are fish fossils known from the Witteberg in the uppermost Devonian; there were reported by Gardiner in 1969 and subsequently in 1973. His descriptions are quite rough as was typical of a lot of Gardiner's work, but this might be what he called Mentzichthys. I would still recommend following up with Robert Gess, though.

[Bradley Flynn]

Thank you @jdp

I have read that possibly 9 actinopterygian sp has been described in the Witteberg group. Below are some described taxa from the Witteberg group.

Placodermi 

Acanthodii 

Chondrichthyes

Actinopterygii 

Sarcopterygii 

I am in contact with a paleontologist that focuses primarily on the devonian formations in the Western Cape. Thank you for all your input I will update this thread as soon as I have a definitive answer.