Fishing in the Central Atlantic, an earliest Cenomanian ichthyodectiform from DSDP Site 367, Cape Verde Basin

• Published in: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
• Main Authors: Casson, Max, Cavin, Lionel, Jeremiah, Jason, Bulot, Luc, Redfern, Jonathan
• Other Authors: Département de géologie et paléontologie, Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle suisse, Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Enseignement des Géosciences de l'Environnement (CEREGE), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Collège de France (CdF (institution))-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2018
• Subjects: [SDU.STU.ST]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Stratigraphy; [SDU.STU.PG]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Paleontology; [SDU.STU.GC]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Geochemistry; [SDU.STU.AG]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Applied geology; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-02105463; https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2018.1510415

International audience The discovery of the ichthyodectiform specimen in a borehole sample collected ca. 400km offshore the West African Atlantic Margin at 699.9 m measured depth is an exceptional event that deserves to be recorded. Although its systematic assignment is too uncertain to draw precise palaeobiogeographical implications, the fish bears a strong similarity to Chiromystus, which would indicate a late marine connection ofthis genus (or a related representative of this lineage), which has been described on both sides of the opening South Atlantic in the Early Cretaceous. If the fish is related to Gillicus, with which it also shares characteristics, it extends southward the known geographical distribution of that genus, currently known from the North Atlantic only.