Back to Blog
Videos of snakehead fish7/23/2023 This may indicate that Aenigmachanna is a Gondwanan lineage, which has survived break-up of the supercontinent, with India separating from Africa at around 120 mya. Molecular analyses further emphasize the uniqueness of Aenigmachanna and indicate that it is a separate lineage of snakeheads, estimated to have split from its sister group at least 34 or 109 million years ago depending on the fossil calibration employed. Our morphological analysis provides evidence for the phylogenetic position of Aenigmachanna as the sister group to Channidae. In addition to a number of derived and unique features, Aenigmachanna has several characters that exhibit putatively primitive conditions not encountered in the family Channidae. Here we provide the first detailed osteological analysis of Aenigmachanna gollum based on high-resolution nano-CT scans and one cleared and stained specimen of this recently described snakehead fish from subterranean waters of Kerala in South India. These ‘living fossils’ hold a prominent role for our understanding of the diversification of the group in question. Pronounced organism-wide morphological stasis in evolution has resulted in taxa with unusually high numbers of primitive characters.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |