New fossils have shed light on the existence of giant bony fish dating from 172 to 66 mya. The new finds have led to the re-interpretation of many older discoveries.
quote:
Prehistoric seas were filled with giant plankton-eating fish which died out at the same time as the dinosaurs, new fossil evidence suggests.
Scientists from Glasgow, Oxford and the United States have identified fossil evidence which shows the fish existed between 66 and 172 million years ago.
They believe it may be a "missing piece in the evolutionary story of fish, mammals and ocean ecosystems".
BBC News
The
Science article is
here, but you will need subscription, which I don't have, to read it.
quote:
Large-bodied suspension feeders (planktivores), which include the most massive animals to have ever lived, are conspicuously absent from Mesozoic marine environments. The only clear representatives of this trophic guild in the Mesozoic have been an enigmatic and apparently short-lived Jurassic group of extinct pachycormid fishes. Here, we report several new examples of these giant bony fishes from Asia, Europe, and North America. These fossils provide the first detailed anatomical information on this poorly understood clade and extend its range from the lower Middle Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous, showing that this group persisted for more than 100 million years. Modern large-bodied, planktivorous vertebrates diversified after the extinction of pachycormids at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, which is consistent with an opportunistic refilling of vacated ecospace.
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