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The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan ‘Chirodipterus’ australis

One of the first endocasts of a dipnoan (lungfish) to be realised was that of the Upper Devonian taxon Chirodipterus australis. This early interpretation was based on observations of the shape of the cranial cavity alone and was not based on a natural cast or ‘steinkern’ nor from serial sectioning....

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Autores principales: Henderson, Struan A.C., Challands, Tom J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6037139/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30002977
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5148
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author Henderson, Struan A.C.
Challands, Tom J.
author_facet Henderson, Struan A.C.
Challands, Tom J.
author_sort Henderson, Struan A.C.
collection PubMed
description One of the first endocasts of a dipnoan (lungfish) to be realised was that of the Upper Devonian taxon Chirodipterus australis. This early interpretation was based on observations of the shape of the cranial cavity alone and was not based on a natural cast or ‘steinkern’ nor from serial sectioning. The validity of this reconstruction is therefore questionable and continued reference to and use of this interpretation in analyses of sarcopterygian cranial evolution runs the risk of propagation of error. Here we present a new detailed anatomical description of the endocast of ‘Chirodipterus’ australis from the Upper Devonian Gogo Formation of Western Australia, known for exceptional 3D preservation which enables fine-scale scrutiny of endocranial anatomy. We show that it exhibits a suite of characters more typical of Lower and Middle Devonian dipnoan taxa. Notably, the small utricular recess is unexpected for a taxon of this age, whereas the ventral expansion of the telencephalon is more typical of more derived taxa. The presence of such ’primitive’ characters in ‘C.’ australis supports its relatively basal position as demonstrated in the most recent phylogenies of Devonian Dipnoi.
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spelling pubmed-60371392018-07-12 The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan ‘Chirodipterus’ australis Henderson, Struan A.C. Challands, Tom J. PeerJ Evolutionary Studies One of the first endocasts of a dipnoan (lungfish) to be realised was that of the Upper Devonian taxon Chirodipterus australis. This early interpretation was based on observations of the shape of the cranial cavity alone and was not based on a natural cast or ‘steinkern’ nor from serial sectioning. The validity of this reconstruction is therefore questionable and continued reference to and use of this interpretation in analyses of sarcopterygian cranial evolution runs the risk of propagation of error. Here we present a new detailed anatomical description of the endocast of ‘Chirodipterus’ australis from the Upper Devonian Gogo Formation of Western Australia, known for exceptional 3D preservation which enables fine-scale scrutiny of endocranial anatomy. We show that it exhibits a suite of characters more typical of Lower and Middle Devonian dipnoan taxa. Notably, the small utricular recess is unexpected for a taxon of this age, whereas the ventral expansion of the telencephalon is more typical of more derived taxa. The presence of such ’primitive’ characters in ‘C.’ australis supports its relatively basal position as demonstrated in the most recent phylogenies of Devonian Dipnoi. PeerJ Inc. 2018-07-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6037139/ /pubmed/30002977 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5148 Text en ©2018 Henderson and Challands http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Evolutionary Studies
Henderson, Struan A.C.
Challands, Tom J.
The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan ‘Chirodipterus’ australis
title The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan ‘Chirodipterus’ australis
title_full The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan ‘Chirodipterus’ australis
title_fullStr The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan ‘Chirodipterus’ australis
title_full_unstemmed The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan ‘Chirodipterus’ australis
title_short The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan ‘Chirodipterus’ australis
title_sort cranial endocast of the upper devonian dipnoan ‘chirodipterus’ australis
topic Evolutionary Studies
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6037139/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30002977
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5148
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