Aetheretmon

Aetheretmon Temporal range: early Mississippian PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Aetheretmon valentiacum fossil
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Family:	†Strepheoschemidae
Genus:	†Aetheretmon White, 1927
Species:	†A. valentiacum
Binomial name
†Aetheretmon valentiacum White, 1927
Synonyms
Aetherthmon White, 1927

Aetheretmon is an extinct genus of freshwater and estuarine ray-finned fish that lived during the early Mississippian (Dinantian) age in what is now Europe, including Scotland, Belarus, and Russia.[1] It contains only the species A. valentiacum.[2] This genus has the oldest known actinopterygian growth series, indicating that juvenile Aetheretmon had tails similar to those of modern teleosts, but unlike teleosts, their upper tails continued to grow throughout their lives instead of truncating early.[3][4] Initially classified as a "palaeoniscid", later studies have recovered it as a stem-neopterygian, or more recently a stem-actinopteran.[2][3]

References

1. "PBDB". paleobiodb.org. Retrieved 2024-02-01.
2. Gardiner, Brian G. (1985). "Actinopterygian fish from the Dinantian of Foulden, Berwickshire, Scotland". Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences. 76: 61–67. doi:10.1017/S0263593300010312.
3. Sallan, Lauren (2016). "Fish 'tails' result from outgrowth and reduction of two separate ancestral tails". Current Biology. 26 (23): R1224 – R1225. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.10.036. ISSN 0960-9822.
4. "Fish fossils reveal how tails evolved, Penn professor finds". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2024-02-01.