Earliest known lepisosteoid extends the range of anatomically modern gars to the Late Jurassic

Abstract

Lepisosteoids are known for their evolutionary conservatism, and their body plan can be traced at least as far back as the Early Cretaceous, by which point two families had diverged: Lepisosteidae, known since the Late Cretaceous and including all living species and various fossils from all continents, except Antarctica and Australia, and Obaichthyidae, restricted to the Cretaceous of northeastern Brazil and Morocco. Until now, the oldest known lepisosteoids were the obaichthyids, which show general neopterygian features lost or transformed in lepisosteids. Here we describe the earliest known lepisosteoid (Nhanulepisosteus mexicanus gen. and sp. nov.) from the Upper Jurassic (Kimmeridgian - about 157 Myr), of the Tlaxiaco Basin, Mexico. The new taxon is based on disarticulated cranial pieces, preserved three-dimensionally, as well as on scales. Nhanulepisosteus is recovered as the sister taxon of the rest of the Lepisosteidae. This extends the chronological range of lepisosteoids by about 46 Myr and of the lepisosteids by about 57 Myr, and fills a major morphological gap in current understanding the early diversification of this group.