The Devonian actinopterygianCheirolepisAgassiz

Author(s):  
D. Michael Pearson ◽  
T. Stanley Westoll

SynopsisThe structure of the fishes constituting the Devonian genusCheirolepisis investigated. Articulated remains from the Scottish Old Red Sandstone and the Canadian Upper Devonian were studied and two species are recognised, the Middle DevonianC. trailliand the Upper DevonianC. canadensis.Recently described fragmentary material from Europe assigned to the genus is best regarded asincertae sedis. Cheirolepisis the earliest actinopterygian genus with extensive material. Neurocranial remains are described, with a crossopterygian-like parasphenoid. There seems to have been a mobile rostral region with several small bones between premaxilla and postrostral extending to the anterior corner of the small dermal orbit. New palatoquadrate and pectoral girdle material is described. The apparently primitive nature of the head skeleton is related to the cranial dynamics and the likely mode of life. The small scales and the elongate-fusiform body shape are a corollary of the method of swimming. The ecology of the fishes is touched upon. A taxonomic investigation of the two species was carried out but although interesting variation in the scale-row numbers came to light no changes at the specific level were deemed necessary. Revised generic and specific diagnoses are given.

1938 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. S. Watson

In 1858 C. H. Pander described as Ptydodus a number of teeth from Upper Devonian limestones in Russia. His admirable figures of complete teeth and of sections through them established the very chimæroid structure of these bodies. Since that time similar teeth have been repeatedly described, and have served for the establishment of three genera and many species from rocks of Middle and Upper Devonian age.


Zootaxa ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 1085 (1) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEAN JUST

A new genus and species of janiroidean Asellota, Xenosella coxospinosa, is described from the mid-bathyal slope off the coast of south-eastern Australia. Following a comparison of the new species to several families of broadly similar body shape, with emphasis on monotypic Pleurocopidae, a new family, Xenosellidae, is proposed for the new species. In the course of comparing relevant taxa, the current placements of Prethura Kensley in the Santiidae and Salvatiella Müller in the Munnidae are rejected. The two genera are considered to be incertae sedis within the Asellota superfamily Janiroidea pending further studies.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. Bluck ◽  
J. C. W. Cope ◽  
C. T. Scrutton

AbstractThe Devonian System was the first pre-Quaternary system to have its base established at an internationally ratified Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP). The base of the System was defined at the base of the Monograptus uniformis Biozone at Klonk in Czechoslovakia (McLaren 1977). The upper boundary of the System is fixed by the base of the Carboniferous, which has been recently ratified in a GSSP at La Serre, Herault, France, at a point coincident with the first appearance of the conodont Siphonodella sulcata.Series. GSSPs have now been designated to define the bases of the Middle and Upper Devonian Series (that of the Lower Devonian being automatically defined by the System boundary).Stages. Consequent upon the selection of a Czech type section for the basal boundary stratotype of the System, the Germanic stages for the lowest parts of the Devonian were no longer appropriate and Lochkovian and Pragian stages have now been formally defined with stratotypes ratified by the I.U.G.S.Devon, the nomenclatorial type locality for the Devonian System (Sedgwick & Murchison 1839) is a region of great tectonic complexity and has not provided suitable sections on which to base international correlations. However, the rocks are frequently richly fossilferous and firm correlations can now be established with the intensively studied developments of the Devonian in Belgium and Germany.Northwards from Devon are found large tracts of the predominantly fluviatile and lacustrine facies which characterizes the Old Red Sandstone. Correlation between the marine Devonian rocks of southwest England and the


1908 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. 438-440
Author(s):  
Fredk Chapman

During the last few years there have passed through my hands for determination many specimens of a twig-like fossil-plant from the highest Silurian flaggy-sandstones of Victoria. These were usually too fragmentary to afford any very decided evidence as to their affinity, although their surfaces showed a close-textured and well-defined structure, referable to that of prosenchymatous wood-cells, and the stem had a definite central vascular axis, such as was first noticed by Hugh Miller in similar fossil remains from the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland.


1992 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Leviton ◽  
Michele Aldrich

During the Late Devonian, in what is now northcentral Pennsylvania, slow moving streams meandered across the plain of the "Catskill" Delta. A varied fish fauna lived in these streams, and their remains are entombed in the ancient stream channel and floodplain sediments. In the 1830's, English railroad engineer Richard Cowling Taylor visited the coal mining community of Blossburg and remarked on the analogy between the Old Red Sandstone of England and that found near Blossburg. Not long afterwards, James Hall (1811-1898), best known for his work on Paleozoic invertebrates of New York, also visited Blossburg to clear up vexing boundary problems in the New York formations. He obtained fish scales from the red sandstones, many of which he identified as scales of Holoptychus nobilissimus, a crossopterygian fish described by Louis Agassiz in 1839. In his annual report for 1839 to the New York Legislature, Hall also took note of some large scales, which were unlike any previously described. Under pressure from the Governor, Hall, like the other survey scientists, had to submit timely reports even if studies were incomplete, and he hurriedly described the new scales, referring them to a new genus and species, Sauritolepis taylori. In his final survey report (1843). Hall dealt more fully with the new fish, renaming it Sauripteris taylori based on the fin structure, the significance of which he had not earlier recognized. The Blossburg fishes did not languish in obscurity; James DeKay referred to them in his checklist of fishes of New York, as did Charles Lyell in his 1845 Travels in North America. In 1890 John Strong Newberry placed the fish fossils in the Lower Carboniferous; he also described several new species. Hall's handling of the fossil fish he had before him and, indeed, the reasons for entering Pennsylvania in the first place, are emblematic of the way much science was practiced in the first half of the 19th century. Further, recent field work in the Blossburg area shows Hall's astuteness as a field geologist for he correctly placed the fish in the Upper Devonian, although in this region the Upper Devonian-Lower Carboniferous boundary is not well defined.


1992 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Graham ◽  
Andrea James ◽  
Kenneth J. Russell

AbstractTwo detailed sections through 4 km of distal alluvium of the Upper Devonian Old Red Sandstone in the Munster Basin, southern Ireland, display a limited number of lithofacies. There is little ordering of these lithofacies on a small scale but changes in the proportions of lithofacies through time define a sequence of stages of basin evolution. The depositional environments changed progressively from sheetflood dominant, via mobile ephemeral channels and floodplains to a more fixed channel–overbank system and eventually to a coastal plain. On the basis of the sedimentary record a progressive reduction in subsidence rate with time is deduced as the main control on the evolution of the basin fill. This deduction is consistent with predictions from previously applied extensional basin models, but is insufficiently refined at present to distinguish between the different models.


The oldest recorded terrestrial invertebrates are various small Diplopods (millepedes) from the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Britain which were probably preserved preferentially due to their robust calcified exoskeleton. While the myriapod affinities and terrestrial habits of the earliest, pre-Prídolí, claims are highly questionable, true diplopods are known from the latest Silurian (Stonehaven Group) and Lower Devonian of Scotland. In addition, a variety of enigmatic myriapod-like arthropods occur sporadically in the late Silurian-Lower Devonian freshwater facies of the M idland Valley of Scotland and Welsh Borderlands. Among these, the kampecarids ss. constitute a discrete group of short-bodied, diplopodous uniramian arthropods, possibly with myriapod affinities and aquatic habits. In contrast to the diversity of chelicerate groups represented in the later terrestrial invertebrate faunas of Rhynie, Aiken and Gilboa, the Middle to Upper Devonian fossil record of the Myriapoda is very sparse. While true diplopods are notably absent, a variety of fragmentary chilopods (centipedes) are now known from the Gilboa Fauna (Givetian) of New York State.


1925 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-601 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Kidston ◽  
W. H. Lang

The deposits of the Devonian period over a large area in the interior of North America to the south of the great lakes are known to be wholly of marine type and to have continued those of the Silurian period. They were formed in a great gulf open to the south. Along the western border of this gulf shore-deposits and, during Upper Devonian times, deposits of Old Red Sandstone type were accumulated, while in the middle of the gulf the resulting rocks were limestones and shales. In Ohio, following on a narrow band of what is regarded as Oriskany Sandstone (Lower Devonian), the Corniferous limestone and some local representatives of the Hamilton formation represent the Middle Devonian. Above this comes a great mass of black shale, which here represents the whole Upper Devonian and may continue up into black shales of the Lower Carboniferous. A black shale at the base of the Upper Devonian rocks has an extensive range in the central region of North America, being represented by the Huron shale in Canada and the Genessee shale in New York. Drifted land plants from the coast of the gulf, or from islands in it, have been found in the black shale and also in the underlying Corniferous limestone, and some other fossils are commonly spoken of as Algæ but have afforded little or no botanical information.


Author(s):  
Brian Choo

ABSTRACTThe Devonian actinopterygian Mimia Gardiner & Bartram (1977) of the Upper Devonian (Frasnian) Gogo Formation of Western Australia, one of the most completely known of all Palaeozoic ray-finned fishes, is renamed Mimipiscis nom. nov. due to preoccupation of the former genus by the butterfly Mimia Evans (1953). Recently acquired data, including the description of newly prepared fossil material, has revealed the presence of a second species in this formerly monotypic genus, as well as previously unreported features of the tail, parasphenoid and ontogenetic variability of type species, Mimipiscis toombsi (Gardiner & Bartram 1977). The second form, Mimipiscis bartrami sp. nov., differs from the contemporary M. toombsi in details of the body shape, squamation, snout, suboperculum and parasphenoid. Phylogenetic analyses recover Mimipiscis and Gogosardina as sister genera within a monophyletic Mimiidae, a clade restricted to the Late Devonian of Western Australia.


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