Athena Review Image Archive ™
Guiyu oneiros
Guiyu oneiros (after after Zhu et al. 2009).
Guiyu oneiros is a Late Silurian bony fish dating from about 419 mya, found in China. It belongs to the superclass Osteichthyes (bony fish) and the class Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish). The name Guiyu means "ghost fish" in Mandarin, and oneiros means "dream" in Greek.
Fossils of Guiyu have been found in Qujing, Yunnan, China, in a late Silurian marine strata. In 2009 Zhu Yin and others found Guiyu remains that were fully articulated, missing only the caudal fin. As such, it is the earliest known articulated bony fish.
The
living fish is estimated to have been 33 cm long and has anatomical
features of both ray-finned and lobe-finned fishes, although the
totality of its features place it closer to the class Sarcopterygii
(lobe-finned fishes).Thus Guiyu provides important evidence on the
split between these two major branches of fish, suggesting it occurred
no later than during the early Devonian period. Guiyu
also had a spine-bearing pectoral girdle, a feature which can be found
in primitive gnathostome vertebrates.
References:
Zhu, M, Zhao, W., Jia, L., Lu, J.,Qiao, T., and Qu, Q. 2009. The oldest articulated osteichthyan reveals mosaic gnathostome characters. Nature. 458 (7237): 469–474.
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