Redfieldius
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Redfieldius Temporal range: Early Jurassic, | |
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| Fossil specimen at the UMMNH | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | †Redfieldiiformes |
| Family: | †Redfieldiidae |
| Genus: | †Redfieldius Hay, 1899 |
| Species: | †R. gracilis |
| Binomial name | |
| †Redfieldius gracilis (Redfield, 1837) | |
| Synonyms | |
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Redfieldius is an extinct genus of freshwater ray-finned fish that inhabited eastern North America during the Early Jurassic period. It contains a single species, R. gracilis, known from the Hettangian to the Sinemurian of the northeastern United States. It is the type genus and was the last surviving member of the order Redfieldiiformes, which was widespread and diverse throughout the preceding Triassic period.[1][2] It is notable for representing possibly the first fossil bony fish collected from North America, with a specimen from Middletown collected in 1816 by Benjamin Silliman.[3]
It was initially described in the genus Catopterus by naturalist John Howard Redfield, but later taxonomic revisions found Catopterus to already be a synonym for the early lungfish Dipterus. Due to this, Oliver Perry Hay reclassified it into the new genus Redfieldius, named in honor of Redfield. Previously, many other species were classified into Catopterus/Redfieldius, but most of these have either been synonymized with R. gracilis or (in the case of former Triassic species classified into this genus) moved into their own genera.[2][4]
