Archipelepidiformes

Archipelepidiformes
Temporal range: Late Telychian-Sheinwoodian
Archipelepis turbinata
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Thelodonti
Order: Archipelepidiformes
Wilson & Märss, 2009
Families

Archipelepidiformes is an order of extinct jawless fishes in the class Thelodonti.

Because the paucity of intact fossils, especially since some families are known entirely from scale fossils, taxonomy of thelodonts is based primarily on scale morphology. A recent assessment of thelodont taxonomy by Wilson and Märss in 2009 merges the orders Loganelliiformes, Katoporiida and Shieliiformes into Thelodontiformes, places families Lanarkiidae and Nikoliviidae into Furcacaudiformes (because of scale morphology) and establishes Archipelepidiformes as the basal-most order.[1]

Currently, only whole body fossils of Archipelepis are known: these fossils show that archipelepids were tadpole-like animals with no fins aside from a forked caudal fin.

References

  1. Wilson, Mark VH, and Tiiu Märss. "Thelodont phylogeny revisited, with inclusion of key scale-based taxa." Estonian Journal of Earth Sciences 58.4 (2009): 297œ310.

External links

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