Revision of the Mesozoic freshwater fish clade Archaeomaenidae

Abstract

Archaeomaenidae is a clade of Mesozoic freshwater fishes that includes the Australian species Archaeomaene tenuis, Madariscus robustus and Wadeichthys oxyops, the Antarctic Oreochima ellioti, the Chinese Zaxilepis qinglongensis, and the Mongolian Gurvanichthys mongoliensis. A comprehensive redescription of the genus Archaeomaene demonstrates that Madariscus robustus is a junior synonym of Archaeomaene tenuis, and thus constitutes an ontogenetic body-size series. A detailed revision of W. oxyops and O. ellioti also confirms their phylogenetic placements within Archaeomaenidae. Furthermore, the incompletely documented taxa Z. qinglongensis and G. mongoliensis are recognized as archaeomaenids. Archaeomaenidae therefore comprises a geographically widely distributed radiation of stem teleosts or teleosteomorphs that is closely related to the archetypal Eurasian clade Pholidophoridae.

Lynne Bean [[email protected]] Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, 142 Mills Road, Acton, ACT 2601, Australia.

Key Words:

• Archaeomaene
• Wadeichthys
• Oreochima
• Zaxilepis
• Gurvanichthys
• Talbragar
• Koonwarra

Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to my husband Rodger, who has been my untiring travelling companion and field hand on many geology excursions, and to our children. The Research School of Earth Sciences (ANU) contributed support and research facilities. Mathew McCurry (AM), Timothy Ziegler (NMV), John Maisey (AMNH), William Simpson and Lance Grande (FMNH) provided access to specimens. In March 2019, I was very grateful to have a second visit to Kansas University to spend ten days working with Gloria Arratia and that laid the foundation for this paper. The help and technical skills of Duncan Bean (Canberra) assisted with illustrations. Alina Bryleva (ANU) translated Cyrillic references, and Richard Van der Laan (University of Utrecht) advised on taxonomy. This paper resulted from a PhD thesis supervised by Stephen Eggins and Leanne Armand (ANU), John Long (Flinders University) and especially Gloria Arratia (University of Kansas), who contributed valuable discussions. Thanks to the Editorial Board of Alcheringa and the reviewers whose comments improved the original manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a scholarship from the Australian Government Research Training Scheme.