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Fish ID


Ptychodus04

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I need the collective help of the TFF community on some identifications. I received a lot of a few fossils to prep and some have no identification. The first is this fish. The skull makes me think gar, but there are no scales. The body seems to have dermal denticles like a shark. This one has me stumped. It is in a thin, layered, limestone of unknown origin.

 

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Not a clue. Is it your impression, it is situated in ventral aspect? 

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Crossopholis magnicaudatus

 

figures from:

 

Grande, L. 2013

The lost world of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from deep time.

University of Chicago Press, 425 pp.

 

image.thumb.png.f3924c204bb4ddeef94d781d9af2ee0a.png

image.png.a84de26dad44fb03836a743755df237c.png

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+1 crossopholis, and a nice one at that. I like how it's preserved in a smaller piece of matrix which allows for easier observation. 

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Does the matrix look like typical Green River Formation? If not it could be a Chinese paddlefish, Protopsephurus sp.

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38 minutes ago, Al Dente said:

Does the matrix look like typical Green River Formation? If not it could be a Chinese paddlefish, Protopsephurus sp.

Fully agree with you, that's a Chinese one

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2 hours ago, Pixpaleosky said:

Fully agree with you, that's a Chinese one

You know the funny thing is that's what I thought at first, for some reason I just assumed this was green river formation....

 

if its not green river it's likely Protosephurus liui. 

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I imeadiatly thougth paddle fish but its not green river rock.  Something funny lookin about that rock?  has anything been done to it?

 

RB

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18 minutes ago, RJB said:

I imeadiatly thougth paddle fish but its not green river rock.  Something funny lookin about that rock?  has anything been done to it?

 

RB

I agree, Ron. Not Green River Matrix.  It looks like there were extensive crack/break repairs, as well as some sort of filling of missing matrix to smooth out the plate.

This could very well be Chinese in origin.

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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All,

 

Thanks for the added insight. This is the hard part of identifying specimens from poorly curated collections.

 

I suspected a Chinese origin when I first saw this but didn’t want to sway the discussion process. I have not seen a ton of Chinese plates though but the pattern of breaks looked similar.

 

There has been some filler added but they did a pretty good job. I still need to do some serious inspection work on it.

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@Al Dente I think you are onto something. A quick Google of Protopsephurus pulls up a link to @oilshale's gallery with a beautiful image of a specimen very similar to this one.

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Good catch.  My initial thought was the first preparator attempted to smooth the mangled the matrix.  Grande et al. 2002 has specimens with similar matrix fractures. 

 

Grande, L., Jin, F., Yabumoto, Y., & Bemis, W.E. 2002

Protopsephurus liui, a well-preserved primitive paddlefish (Acipenseriformes: Polyodontidae) from the Lower Cretaceous of China.

Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 22(2):209-237

 

image.png.e65b31b48b584a12e360fa9164eab7ff.png

image.png.a84de26dad44fb03836a743755df237c.png

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