Amakusaichthys, a new ichthyodectiform from Chiapas, Mexico

[Halichoeres]

A very nice fossil of a new teleost species from Chiapas:



Description is open access in Palaeo-Electronica: https://palaeo-electronica.org/content/2024/5295-a-long-nose-ichthyodectiform

[Faelrin]

Beautiful fossil. I like how wavy the spine preserved.

[Halichoeres]

I can imagine it complaining about its achin' back.

[DinoToyForum]

Is that a loose sclerotic ring at the bottom right of the top picture? I can't find it interpreted in any figure in the paper.

[Halichoeres]

Is that a loose sclerotic ring at the bottom right of the top picture? I can't find it interpreted in any figure in the paper.

Good question. The sclerotic rings I've seen in Xiphactinus and Cladocyclus are less spindly and segmented in squat blocks, which doesn't really resemble what I see here. But one of the smaller paratypes has a similar-looking two-part ring that they identify as scleral bones in figure 8, so it might be. At first I took the one in the photo above as an end-on view of the vertebral centra of a much larger fish!