New description and diagnosis of Hyneria lindae (Sarcopterygii, Tristichopteridae) from the Upper Devonian Catskill Formation in Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

ABSTRACT

Thomson (1968, Postilla 124:1–13) described and diagnosed the tristichopterid Hyneria lindae from parts of a disarticulated skull and isolated scales recovered from the Upper Devonian (Famennian) Catskill Formation of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Since the publication of that description, knowledge of the tristichopterid clade has grown significantly, with numerous new descriptions of Famennian taxa from around the world. Additionally, a concerted effort to collect vertebrates from the Catskill Formation in Pennsylvania has produced significant new material of Hyneria lindae from the type locality at Red Hill, Clinton County, Pennsylvania. The new material serves as the basis for a rediagnosis and redescription of Hyneria lindae. The species is uniquely diagnosed by features including scales with a fringed free margin, a wide and blunt snout, and short intertemporals. The redescription of H. lindae gives occasion to review all of the Catskill Formation tristichopterid material that requires further diagnosis. This includes a near-complete cranial specimen collected near Red Hill that was originally diagnosed as Eusthenodon wängsjöi by Thomson (1976; Journal of Paleontology 50:1203–1208) and is here revised as Hyneria cf. lindae and figured for the first time. The emerging sample of tristichopterids from the Catskill Formation informs the diversity and paleobiogeography of these large predators in the fluvial ecosystems of the Red Hill site and within the Catskill Delta complex.

Citation for this article: Daeschler, E. B., and J. P. Downs. 2018. New description and diagnosis of Hyneria lindae (Sarcopterygii, Tristichopteridae) from the Upper Devonian Catskill Formation in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2018.1448834.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank C F. Mullison for fossil preparation and N. D. Rowe for the discovery and collection of much of the Hyneria lindae material from the Red Hill field locality. We thank S. Bunson for his illustrations and his work on compiling the figures, K. Rozanitis for curatorial support, P. Bourdon and I. Bourdon for their collecting help at Red Hill, and J. J. Smaling for his collecting and donating of the tristichopterid fossils from near Port Matilda, Centre County, Pennsylvania. We thank D. Szatmary for his preparation of ANSP 20935. We recognize C. Schaff and J. Cundiff of the Museum of Comparative Zoology for loaning specimen MCZ 8825. P. Ahlberg, S. Olive, and N. Shubin offered helpful comments on the developing manuscript. Relevant anatomical data were collected by a group of students at Swarthmore College, and we thank T. Elliott, K. Escoto, I. Fayanju, S. Jung, and R. Pitkin for their efforts to describe the H. lindae referred material. This work was made possible by National Science Foundation grants EAR-9628163, EAR-0207721, and EAR-0544093 and National Geographic Society grant 5436–95. Finally, we thank the editor L. Sallan, M. Brazeau, and an anonymous reviewer for improving the quality of the manuscript.