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VIII.—On the Pectoral Fin of Cœlacanthus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Extract

Among the fossil fishes of the Talbragar Beds (Jurassic?) described by Dr. A. Smith Woodward in a memoir of the Geological Survey of New South Wales (1895), there is the ventral portion of the abdominal region of a Cœlacanth fish, having one of the pectoral fins well shown. The fin is shown in counterpart, and is thus described:— “It exhibits, as usual, the characteristic obtuse lobation and the large fringe of articulated attenuated dermal rays, and is unique in displaying some of the eudoskeletal supporting bones. These elements seem to have been well ossified, though with persistent cartilage internally. At the base of the fin there occurs a broken fragment of bone1 incapable of determination; but in the lobe of the fin itself there is a series of four well-defined, hourglass-shaped supports. Of these bones the anterior three are much elongated, and nearly equally slender, while the fourth is much more robust and expanded at its distal end. The four elements radiate from the anterior half of the base of the fin; and it seems very probable that some smaller cartilage behind and near the distal border of the lobe have disappeared from lack of ossification. The fin-rays gradually increase in length from the anterior border to the middle of the lobe, whence they decrease again backwards, and finally become extremely delicate.”

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1901

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References

1 My specimen would point to the fact that this is a fragment of the clavicle.