Engraulis, Mesopoma and Coccocephalichthys

Engraulis encrasicholus (Linneaus 1758; up to 21cm) is the extant European anchovy, here nesting with the Triassic flying fish, Thoracopterus. As a primitive teleost, the jaw joint is behind the orbit. They travel is open water schools and can swim fast. Traditionally considered a relative of Clupea, the herring, in the LRT it nests more parsimoniously on the other branch of bony fish.

Mesopoma planti (Traquair 1890; Early Carboniferous; 340mya; Coates and Teitjen 2018) on the basis of µCT tomography and the revelation of a complete skull and skeleton beneath the tough dermal scales. The pectoral fin was a "double propterygium", rotated with the leading edge dorsalmost. Mesopoma was a zooplankton feeder. Note the shark-like rostrum overhanging the short mandible. Here it nests with Coccocephalicthysand Engraulis, both larger taxa.

Coccocephalichthys wildi (originally Coccocephalus wildi Watson 1925; Whitley 1940; Poplin and Véran 1996; Figueroa et al 2023; Late Carboniferous) was originally considered a palaeoniscid. Here it nests with Bluefieldius and Howqualepis. Note the shorter jaws with the jaw joint below the occiput.\

Gray JE 1830. : Illustrations of Indian Zoology 1, (pl. 85).

Lambe LM 1916a. Ganoid fishes from near Banff, Alberta. Ibid., ser. 3, sect. 4, vol. 10, pp. 3544.

Linnaeus C 1758. Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Tomus I. Editio decima, reformata.

Poplin C and Véran M 1996. A revision of the actinopterygian fish Coccocephalus wildi from the Upper Carboniferous of Lancashire. In Milner, A. R. (ed.) Studies on Carboniferous and Permian vertebrates. Special Papers in Palaeontology 52, 7-29.

Traquair RH 1890. Observations on some fossil fishes from the Lower Carboniferous rocks of Eskdale, Dumfriesshire. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 6:493-493.

Watson DMS 1925. The structure of certain palæoniscids and the relationships of that group with other bony fish. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 54, 815–870.

Whitley GP 1940. The Nomenclator Zoologicus and some new fish names. Australian Naturalist, 10:241–243.

Xu G-H, Ma X-Y and Zhao L-J 2018. A large peltopleurid fish (Actinopterygii: Peltopleuriformes) from the Middle Triassic of Yunnan and Guizhou, China. Vertebrata PalAsiatica 56(4):106–120.

wiki/Coccocephalichthys
wiki/European_anchovy
wiki/Engraulinae
wiki/Mesopoma - not yet listed