Scalacurvichthys (meaning "curved scale fish") is an extinct genus of Pycnodontinae Pycnodontiformes fish from the Amminadav Formation or Bet-Meir Formation in the West Bank; Palestine. The type species is S. naishi, only known from the holotype.
Etymology
The generic name,
Scalacurvichthys, is derived from the
Latin language words 'scala' and 'curva'. 'Scala' translates to scale, and 'curva' translates to curved. This is in reference to the raised, anterior-facing first dorsal ridge scale protruding above the skull roof. And the
Greek language word 'ἰχθύς' which translates to fish. The specific name,
naishi, is dedicated to
Darren Naish, who is a prominent palaeontologist and the founder of the vertebrate palaeozoology blog Tetrapod Zoology, and its accompanying convention TetZooCon.
Description
Scalacurvichthys is known only from the
holotype,
SMNK-PAL. 8613, which was described by Cawley and Kriwet (2017). The holotype measures at around in length. It consists of an almost completely and fully articulated specimen, however, it is lacking some
cranial and
postcranial details due to taphonomic processes. Several morphological elements, especially of the postcranial skeleton, are preserved and recognizable only as imprints.
Classification
In their
phylogenetic analysis, Cawley and Kriwet (2017) recovered
Scalacurvichthys amongst the
Pycnodontinae grade of
Pycnodontiformes, most closely related to
Oropycnodus and other pycnodontines. The following
cladogram represents the phylogenetic results of a consensus tree, with unordered characters based on the modified database of Poyato-Ariza and Wenz (2002).
The original tree used several members outside of
Pycnodontidae and Pycnodontiformes as an outgroup, however, for the sake of simplicity, only members of Pycnodontidae are shown below.
