Anguillavus Explained

Anguillavus is an extinct genus of basal marine eel that lived during the upper Cenomanian of Lebanon.^[1] It is the only known member of the family Anguillavidae. Its primitive nature compared to extant eels is indicated by it still retaining its pelvic fins, which have been lost in modern eels.^[2]

It has two species:^[3]

• A. mazeni Belouze et al. 2003
• A. quadripinnis Hay, 1903

The species A. bathshebae, also described by Hay (1903), was synonymized with A. quadripinnis in 2003.^[4]

In 1920, another fossil ray-finned fish from Cenomanian-aged marine strata in Kansas was initially also considered an eel like Anguillavus, and was described as Anguillavus hackberryensis Martin, 1922. In 1981, the holotype of "A." hackberryensis was reexamined, and found to not group with the rest of the genus, but rather be a dercetid aulopiform fish. Robins (1989) went as far as classifying Anguillavus as a whole as not an eel. However, later studies have firmly refuted this, and have consistently recovered Anguillavus as a stem-eel.^{[5] [6]}

Notes and References

1. Sepkoski . Jack . 2002 . A compendium of fossil marine animal genera . dead . Bulletins of American Paleontology . 363 . 1–560 . 2009-02-27 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110723131237/http://strata.ummp.lsa.umich.edu/jack/showgenera.php?taxon=611&rank=class . 2011-07-23.
2. Wiley . E. O. . Stewart . J. D. . 1981 . Urenchelys abditus, new species, the first undoubted eel (Teleostei: Anguilliformes) from the Cretaceous of North America . Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology . en . 1 . 1 . 43–47 . 10.1080/02724634.1981.10011877 . 0272-4634.
3. Web site: PBDB . 2024-02-20 . paleobiodb.org.
4. Belouze . A. . Gayet . M. . Atallah . C. . 2003-01-01 . Les premiers Anguilliformes : I. Révision des genres cénomaniens Anguillavus HAY, 1903 et Luenchelys nov. gen. . Géobios . 36 . 3 . 241–273 . 10.1016/S0016-6995(03)00029-9. 2003Geobi..36..241B .
5. Johnson . G. David . Ida . Hitoshi . Sakaue . Jiro . Sado . Tetsuya . Asahida . Takashi . Miya . Masaki . 2012-03-07 . A 'living fossil' eel (Anguilliformes: Protanguillidae, fam. nov.) from an undersea cave in Palau . Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences . en . 279 . 1730 . 934–943 . 10.1098/rspb.2011.1289 . 0962-8452 . 3259923 . 21849321.
6. Pfaff . Cathrin . Zorzin . Roberto . Kriwet . Jürgen . 2016-08-11 . Evolution of the locomotory system in eels (Teleostei: Elopomorpha) . BMC Evolutionary Biology . 16 . 1 . 159 . 10.1186/s12862-016-0728-7 . free . 1471-2148 . 4981956 . 27514517.