A new perleidid neopterygian fish from the Early Triassic (Dienerian, Induan) of South China, with a reassessment of the relationships of Perleidiformes

Zhiwei Yuan; Guang-Hui Xu; Xu Dai; Fengyu Wang; Xiaokang Liu; Enhao Jia; Luyi Miao; Haijun Song

doi:10.7717/peerj.13448

A new perleidid neopterygian fish from the Early Triassic (Dienerian, Induan) of South China, with a reassessment of the relationships of Perleidiformes

PeerJ. 2022 May 17:10:e13448. doi: 10.7717/peerj.13448. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Zhiwei Yuan¹, Guang-Hui Xu^{2

3}, Xu Dai¹, Fengyu Wang¹, Xiaokang Liu¹, Enhao Jia¹, Luyi Miao¹, Haijun Song¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China.
² Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Neopterygii is the largest clade of ray-finned fishes, including Teleostei, Holostei, and their closely related fossil taxa. This clade was first documented in the Early Carboniferous and underwent rapid evolutionary radiation during the Early to Middle Triassic. This article describes a new perleidid neopterygian species, Teffichthys elegans sp. nov., based on 13 well-preserved specimens from the lower Daye Formation (Dienerian, Induan) in Guizhou, China. The new species documents one of the oldest perleidids, providing insights into the early diversification of this family. The results of a phylogenetic analysis recover Teffichthys elegans sp. nov. as the sister taxon to Teffichthys madagascariensis within the Perleididae. T. elegans sp. nov. shares three derived features of Perleididae: the length of the anteroventral margin of the dermohyal nearly half the length of the anterodorsal margin of the preopercle; the anteroventral margin of the preopercle nearly equal to the anterior margin of the subopercle in length; and the anteroventral margin of the preopercle one to two times as long as the anterodorsal margin of the preopercle. It possesses diagnostic features of Teffichthys but differs from T. madagascariensis by the following features: presence of three supraorbitals; six pairs of branchiostegal rays; relatively deep anterodorsal process of subopercle; absence of spine on the posterior margin of the jugal; and pterygial formula of D26/P14, A22, C36/T39-41. The Perleidiformes are restricted to include only the Perleididae, and other previously alleged 'perleidiform' families (e.g., Hydropessidae and Gabanellidae) are excluded to maintain the monophyly of the order. Similar to many other perleidids, T. elegans sp. nov. was likely a durophagous predator with dentition combining grasping and crushing morphologies. The new finding also may indicate a relatively complex trophic structure of the Early Triassic marine ecosystem in South China.

Keywords: Biotic recovery; Early Triassic; Neopterygii; Osteology; Phylogeny.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Biological Evolution*
China
Ecosystem*
Fishes / genetics
Phylogeny

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (92155201, 41821001, 42172008), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB26000000), and the 111 Project (B08030). This study is a contribution to IGCP 630. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.