Product Code Database
Lycoptera is an extinct genus of fish that lived from Early Cretaceous, Barremian to Aptian in present-day China, North Korea, Mongolia and Siberia. Although there is record from Jurassic Formation in Siberia, its age remains questionable. It is known from abundant fossils representing sixteen species, which serve as important index fossil used to date geologic formations in China. Along with the genus Peipiaosteus, Lycoptera has been considered a defining member of the Jehol Biota, a prehistoric ecosystem famous for its feathered dinosaurs, which flourished for 20 million years during the Early Cretaceous, where it occurs abundantly in often monospecific beds, where they are thought to have died in seasonal mass death events.Jin, F., Zhang, F.C., Li, Z.H., Zhang, J.Y., Li, C. and Zhou, Z.H. (2008). "On the horizon of Protopteryx and the early vertebrate fossil assemblages of the Jehol Biota." Chinese Science Bulletin, 53(18): 2820-2827. Lycoptera is a crown group teleost belonging to an early diverging lineage of the Osteoglossomorpha, which contains living , arapaima, arowana, Mormyridae and Notopteridae.
Many specimens preserve minute details and impressions of soft tissues. Lycoptera was covered in tiny oval scales about 1.2 millimeters across, and, in life, would have had a superficial resemblance to the common minnow.
Lycoptera fossils are commonly found in large groups, buried together quickly in fine lake sediments likely due to mass death events from seasonal upwelling of anoxic waters during late autumn and winter. This had led to suggestions that they were gregarious in life, congregating in shoals.
Classification and species
Sixteen species of Lycoptera have been described, nine from the Jehol Group. The table below is based primarily on the valid species listed by Zhang and Jin in the 2008 book The Jehol Fossils.
Lycoptera middendorffi Müller 1847 Valid, type species Lycoptera macrorhyncha (Eichwald) (1868) Lycoptera davidi (Sauvage) (1880) Valid Lycoptera sinensis Woodward 1901 Valid Lycoptera ferox Grabau 1923 Lycoptera chosenensis Makiyama 1927 Lycoptera kansuensis Grabau 1928 Lycoptera woodwardi Grabau 1928 Lycoptera jaholensis Grabau 1928 Lycoptera fragilis Hussakof 1932 Valid Lycoptera takunagai Seito 1936 Valid Lycoptera muroii (Takai) (1943) Valid Lycoptera longicephalus Liu et al. 1962 Valid Lycoptera lunteensis Liu et al. 1962 Lycoptera polyspondylus Liu et al. 1962 Lycoptera tungi Liu et al. 1962 Lycoptera wangi Lycoptera sankeyushuensis (Ma & Sun) (1988) Valid Lycoptera fuxinensis Zhang 2002 Valid
|
|
