Geology

Geology
The 366 daily episodes in 2014 were chronological snapshots of earth history, beginning with the Precambrian in January and on to the Cenozoic in December. You can find them all in the index in the right sidebar. In 2015, the daily episodes for each month were assembled into monthly packages (link in index at right), and a few new episodes were posted from 2015-18. You may be interested in a continuation of this blog on Substack at this location. Thanks for your interest!

Thursday, November 20, 2014

November 20. Teleost fish





Photo of Xiphactinus from Kansas by Spacini, used under Creative Commons license.

Teleost fish are known as far back as the Triassic, but they diversified mightily in the Cretaceous. This is the group that includes about 96% of all modern fishes, many of which began in the Cretaceous. More than 26,000 living species of fish are teleosts.  

Teleosts have some skeletal differences that distinguish them from earlier fish, including a movable jaw and a spine that ends before the tail fin. 

While the Cretaceous saw the expansion of many groups of fish alive today, including salmon, bass, and cod, on an individual species level there were plenty of comings and goings – new species appearing, while others went extinct, which is always happening. On the whole you’d probably be hard pressed to see any big differences between many Cretaceous teleosts and modern varieties. Xiphactinus, whose name means sword-fin, was one huge teleost that reached 20 feet in length. They were fanged predators who lived in the late Cretaceous seas of Kansas, where they were first discovered in the 1850s, and at other locations in North America as well as Europe, Australia, and South America. Many fossil specimens include the skeletons of large prey in the stomachs of Xiphactinus.

The name teleost is from the Greek meaning “complete” and “bone” – a nicely, completely, boned fish.
—Richard I. Gibson

Photo of Xiphactinus by Spacini, used under Creative Commons license.

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