Carolowilhelmina

Carolowilhelmina is only known from a single, incomplete skull. However, what is present in the fossil is well preserved. Carolowilhelmina was large, as the skull alone could have reached over half a meter in length. The skull also possesses a long snout of an uncertain length, since most of it had eroded away before its discovery. The snout has several thornlike spines running down it laterally. The skull possesses no teeth, but instead has a unique spongy knob-like structure in the mouth. As with Rolfosteus, Carolowilhelmina possessed a long tubular rostral plate, with small postnasal plates and low inferognathal plates.

Taxonomically, Carolowilhelmina seems closer to camuropiscids than to brachyderoids and Maideria. However, the number of unique features seen in the skull, such as the spines, lack of teeth, and unique sensory line placement makes the familial placement of this genus unclear.

Living just before the Kačák Event, Carolowilhelmina inhabited an environment with a rapidly deepening Celtiberian sea alongside pelagic invertebrate fauna represented by dacryoconarids, bivalves, small brachiopods, and ammonoids. The abundance of invertebrates in the region can infer the presence of floating algae, which may have also contributed to the abundance of organic matter preserved in the anoxic sediment. Other fish like Grossius, and the conodont Tortodus kocklianus were present in this environment.

Carolowilhelmina thus inhabited a pelagic, open ocean environment, and when it died had sunk into an anoxic deep sea environment where it was untouched by boring or encrusting organisms. It is inferred to have preyed on the abundance of invertebrate life beneath the algal floats near the surface, using its large eyes to spot prey. It possibly immigrated from the Paleo-Tethys Ocean.

• Mark-Kurik, E & Carls, P. 2002. A Long-snouted Late Eifelian Arthrodire from Aragón (Spain). Revista Española de Paleontología, Madrid, pp. 117–135.