In spite of new clues, this historic fish has stumped scientists for hundreds of years

“We all know what it isn’t,” says Donald Davesne, a paleontologist on the Nationwide Museum of Herbal Historical past in Paris, “nevertheless it’s unclear what it might be.”

The creature has shared the genus title Pegasus with seamoths — flat, armored snout-nosed fish — since Italian naturalist Giovanni Serafino Volta first described it in 1796. “They have got not anything in commonplace,” Davesne says. “I don’t know what this man used to be pondering.”

Davesne and paleontologist Giorgio Carnevale of the College of Turin in Italy tested the fossilized fish, each and every not than six centimeters, the usage of a stereomicroscope and images taken underneath ultraviolet mild. In response to the specimens’ skeletal anatomy and fin dimension, the duo additionally dominated out a detailed kinship with oarfish, as some paleontologists had lately recommended.

As a substitute, Davesne and Carnevale be aware similarities to the larvae of recent cusk-eels and different fishes within the team Teleostei, together with an extended dorsal-fin ray that prolonged above the pinnacle (SN: 5/1/15). The fish’s tiny stomach suggests its guts more than likely needed to hang in a pouch beneath the frame, additionally like teleost larvae.

However the fossil fish themselves don’t seem to be larvae, the researchers say, because of their slightly massive our bodies and entirely ossified skeletons. Nonetheless, the fossils may constitute an early look of those larval characteristics, in all probability as a part of the explosion of spiny-rayed fish variety after the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction kind of 66 million years in the past, Davesne says.

He cautions that confirming any dating will require additional info — just like the tail finish of the fish, which is lacking from each fossils. “In the future, any person will to find every other specimen this is even higher preserved,” Davesne says. “That might be neat!”

With its circle of relatives ties unclear, the duo says, the fish wishes a brand new genus title. Following Carnevale’s naming dependancy, Davesne has selected a moniker in honor of a past due musician he knew in my view. It is going to be printed as soon as the paper is officially printed.