Genus of fishes
Masillosteus ("bony one from Messel ") is an extinct genus of gar that inhabited western North America and Europe during the Eocene . It is known from two species, each from a famous freshwater lagerstätte : M. kelleri from the Messel pit in the Messel Formation of Germany , and M. janeae from Fossil Butte in the Green River Formation of Wyoming .[ 1] [ 2] They are known from only a few specimens from both localities, and may have not been permanent inhabitants of the fossil lakes where they were preserved.[ 3] [ 4]
Masillosteus was an atypical gar with a short, broad snout and molariform teeth likely adapted to crushing crustaceans and other hard-shelled invertebrate prey.[ 1] It shares the short, broad snout with the extinct gar Cuneatus , which inhabited western North America during the same time period; both genera are classified in the tribe Cuneatini . Although fossils of both genera are known only from the Paleogene , it is assumed that both diverged from one another during the Cretaceous .[ 5]
References
^ a b Micklich, N.; Klappert, G. (2001). "Masillosteus kelleri , a new gar (Actinopterygii, Lepisosteidae) from the middle Eocene of Grube Messel (Hessen, Germany)" . Kaupia . 11 : 73–81.
^ Grande, Lance (2010). "An Empirical Synthetic Pattern Study of Gars (lepisosteiformes) and Closely Related Species, Based Mostly on Skeletal Anatomy. the Resurrection of Holostei" . Copeia . 2010 (2A): iii–871. ISSN 0045-8511 .
^ Micklich, Norbert (1 December 2012). "Peculiarities of the Messel fish fauna and their palaeoecological implications: a case study" . Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments . 92 (4): 585–629. doi :10.1007/s12549-012-0106-4 . ISSN 1867-1608 .
^ de Mazancourt, Valentin; Wappler, Torsten; Wedmann, Sonja (27 October 2022). "Exceptional preservation of internal organs in a new fossil species of freshwater shrimp (Caridea: Palaemonoidea) from the Eocene of Messel (Germany)" . Scientific Reports . 12 (1): 18114. doi :10.1038/s41598-022-23125-9 . ISSN 2045-2322 . PMC 9613706 .
^ Brownstein, Chase Doran; Yang, Liandong; Friedman, Matt; Near, Thomas J. (20 December 2022). "Phylogenomics of the Ancient and Species-Depauperate Gars Tracks 150 Million Years of Continental Fragmentation in the Northern Hemisphere" . Systematic Biology . 72 (1): 213–227. Retrieved 5 June 2023 .