Megamastax
Sign in to saveMegamastax (meaning "big mouth") is a genus of lobe-finned fish which lived during the late Silurian period, about 423 million years ago, in China. Before the discovery of Megamastax, it was thought that jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) were limited in size and variation before the Devonian period. Megamastax is known only from jaw bones and it is estimated that it reached about long.
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- Discovery and naming
- Description
- Paleobiology
- Paleoecology
- References
Megamastax (meaning "big mouth") is a genus of lobe-finned fish which lived during the late Silurian period, about 423 million years ago, in China. Before the discovery of Megamastax, it was thought that jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) were limited in size and variation before the Devonian period. Megamastax is known only from jaw bones and it is estimated that it reached about long.
==Discovery and naming== Fossils of Megamastax were found in a layer of the Kuanti Formation in Qujing, Yunnan, China. The holotype of Megamastax amblyodus is IVPP V18499.1, a complete left mandible. Two additional specimens, IVPP V18499.2 (a partial left mandible) and IVPP V18499.3 (a right maxilla) have been referred to the species.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Megamastax” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.