The taxonomic utility of fossil bichir finlet fragments

[Halichoeres]

This is for the fish nerds. Bichirs have lots of dorsal finlets, and their morphology can vary within individuals depending on which of the dozen or so finlets you're looking at (i.e. finlet 1 looks different from finlet 9). This isn't very surprising, but it suggests some caution when talking about fossil taxa, many of which are only known from finlet fragments or isolated scales.



Paper (open access): https://peerj.com/articles/5083/

[SBell]

Well, that was certainly of interest to me anyway...now to fall down the rabbit hole of all the different references!

Of course...taxonomic utility is nice, but I have always wondered about the functional morphology of the pinnules.

Also...so someone determined that we are back to Calamoichthys? Is anyone following this? I haven't seen anyone prefer it over Erpetoichthys...

[Halichoeres]

Well, that was certainly of interest to me anyway...now to fall down the rabbit hole of all the different references!

Of course...taxonomic utility is nice, but I have always wondered about the functional morphology of the pinnules.

Also...so someone determined that we are back to Calamoichthys? Is anyone following this? I haven't seen anyone prefer it over Erpetoichthys...

Calamoichthys seems to be the preference of these authors, but they are lonesome in that. The two names were based on the same type series, and they were published the same year, with Erpetoichthys coming first. I seem to recall that JA Smith thought Erpetoichthys was preoccupied and so changed it to Calamoichthys, but Erpetoichthys wasn't in fact preoccupied, so it should have priority.

[SBell]

Well, that was certainly of interest to me anyway...now to fall down the rabbit hole of all the different references!

Of course...taxonomic utility is nice, but I have always wondered about the functional morphology of the pinnules.

Also...so someone determined that we are back to Calamoichthys? Is anyone following this? I haven't seen anyone prefer it over Erpetoichthys...

Calamoichthys seems to be the preference of these authors, but they are lonesome in that. The two names were based on the same type series, and they were published the same year, with Erpetoichthys coming first. I seem to recall that JA Smith thought Erpetoichthys was preoccupied and so changed it to Calamoichthys, but Erpetoichthys wasn't in fact preoccupied, so it should have priority.

I wasn't yet able to get to the full article, but that was certainly my impression--a very roundabout way to try and upend what has been pretty standard for some time.