Mene rhombea

Mene rhombea is an extinct perciform fish belonging to the family Menidae. During the Middle Eocene (Lutetian epoch), about 48 to 40 mya, these fishes lived in the Tethys Ocean, a large tropical sea in the area corresponding to the current Mediterranean. This ocean was extended between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia. At this time, where Monte Bolca is today, M. rhombea, and its relative, M. oblonga, lived in a tropical lagoon.

Mene rhombea
Temporal range: Middle Eocene
Mene rhombea, from Mount Bolca, Verona
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Carangiformes
Family: Menidae
Genus: Mene
Species:
†M. rhombea
Binomial name
†Mene rhombea
Volta, 1796
Synonyms
  • Gasteronemus rhombus

Description

Mene rhombea had a laterally compressed body, very long and slim pelvic fins and a wide triangular tail fin. As suggested by their fossils' small, upturned mouths, and by comparison of its living relative, as Mene maculata, fishes of this species were planktivore. The species shows close affinities with contemporary species inhabiting the coral reef environment of the Indo-Pacific warm seas.

Distribution

Their greatly valued fossils comes from the laggerstat Monte Bolca, about 30 kilometres north-east of Verona, Italy.

  • Restoration of Mene rhombea
  • Mene rhombea, from Monte Bolca, Verona, at the Naturhistorisches Museum, Wien
  • Mene rhombea, from Bolca
  • Mene rhombea specimen of the Lessini mountains in imprint and counterimpress
gollark: I just use a calculator for all polynomial solving tasks.
gollark: The sum of roots thing? That doesn't tell you the roots, though.
gollark: And I can clearly tell in some domains when someone is better at something than me, even if I don't know exactly how.
gollark: The halting problem is that no Turing machine can tell if arbitrary Turing machines will halt though? No complexity hierarchy involved except theoretical oracle things.
gollark: Regardless of whether you think they are impossible or not, IQ tests and similar things are, as far as I know, correlated with stuff like educational attainment and income.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.