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A new lungfish from the LateTriassic of the mid-Zambesi basin, Zimbabwe Project ID: 000547763 Public
1 Media · 1 Specimen · Creator: Tom Challands · Managed by: Tom Challands

The lungfish, the extant sister group of the tetrapods, have an evolutionary history illustrated by a fossil record extending for ~420 million years. The post-Paleozoic fossil record of the clade is almost exclusively restricted to sediments deposited in freshwater paleoenvironments, and is characterized by an abundance of highly mineralized tooth plates whereas cranial and postcranial remains are scarce. Here, we report a sample of isolated tooth plates found in the Upper Triassic Pebbly Arkose Formation of the Mid-Zambezi Basin, Zimbabwe. It consists of upper and lower tooth plates from adult individuals, plus some dental plates referred to juvenile individuals, which we refer to a new species of Ferganoceratodus. This discovery provides an opportunity to review briefly the tooth plates of the ‘ptychoceratodontid morphotype’ reported from around the world. Various occurrences previously referred to Ptychoceratodus are here referred to Ferganoceratodus. We describe the histology of the tooth plates of the new species and note similarities with other Mesozoic taxa. The scarcity of histological data for Mesozoic lungfish tooth plates compounds the problem of assigning isolated tooth plates to genus and species level. Ferganoceratodus and closely related taxa arose in the Early Triassic in southern Gondwana and diversified worldwide in the Late Triassic. The genus then became more common in Laurasia during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous and but declined thereafter with relict Late Cretaceous occurrences in Madagascar and South America.

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  ID Part Object Taxonomy Type Date Added Publication Status  
000547805 Heel of lungfish tooth plate NHMZ:2432(8) Ferganoceratodus edwardsi Volumetric Image Series 2023-08-08 Open Download  
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