Eomola

Eomola
Temporal range:
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Tetraodontiformes
Family: Molidae
Genus: Eomola
Tyler & Bannikov, 1992
Species:
E. bimaxillaria
Binomial name
Eomola bimaxillaria
Tyler & Bannikov, 1992

Eomola is an extinct genus of ocean sunfish that inhabited the northeastern Tethys Ocean during the Eocene. It contains a single species, E. bimaxillaria from the Bartonian-aged Kuma Formation of Krasnodar Krai, Russia.[1][2]

It is one of the earliest fossil ocean sunfishes known, and differs from all other molids by the structure of its jaws, in that its premaxillae are unfused, unlike all other known molids.[1] The genus Eomola was described in 1992 by James Tyler and Alexandre Bannikov.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b Tyler, James C.; Bannikov, Alexandre F. (1992). "New Genus of Primitive Ocean Sunfish with Separate Premaxillae from the Eocene of Southwest Russia (Molidae, Tetraodontiformes)". Copeia. 1992 (4): 1014–1023. doi:10.2307/1446631. ISSN 0045-8511.
  2. ^ Bannikov, A. F.; Parin, N. N. (1996). "The List of Marine Fishes From Cenozoic (Upper Paleocene-Middle Miocene) Localities in Southern European Russia and Adjacent Countries". Voprosy Ikhtiologii. 37 (2): 149–161.
  3. ^ Tyler, James C.; Bannikov, Alexandre F. (1992). "New genus of primitive ocean sunfish with separate premaxillae from the Eocene of Southwest Russia (Molidae, Tetraodontiformes)". Copeia. 1992 (4). Copeia, Vol. 1992, No. 4: 1014–1023. doi:10.2307/1446631. JSTOR 1446631.