First shark from the late Devonian (Frasnian) Gogo Formation, Western Australia sheds new light on the development of tessellated calcified cartilage

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Date
2015-05-28
Authors
Long, John A
Burrow, Carole J
Ginter, Michal
Maisey, John G
Trinajstic, Kate
Coates, Michael I
Young, Gavin C
Senden, Tim J
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PLOS One
Rights
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Rights Holder
Copyright: © 2015 Long et al.
Abstract
Here we present new data from the first well-preserved chondrichthyan fossil from the early Late Devonian (ca. 380–384 Mya) Gogo Formation Lägerstatte of Western Australia. The specimen is the first Devonian shark body fossil to be acid-prepared, revealing the endoskeletal elements as three-dimensional undistorted units: Meckel’s cartilages, nasal, ceratohyal, basibranchial and possible epibranchial cartilages, plus left and right scapulocoracoids, as well as teeth and scales. This unique specimen is assigned to Gogoselachus lynnbeazleyae n. gen. n. sp.
Description
This work is a contribution to IGCP 596.
Keywords
Palaeontology
Citation
Long, J.A., Burrow, C.J., Ginter, M., Maisey, J.G., Trinajstic, K., Coates, M.I., Young, G.C. and Senden, T.J., 2015. First shark from the late Devonian (Frasnian) Gogo Formation, Western Australia sheds new light on the development of tessellated calcified cartilage. PLOS One, 10(5): e0126066. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0126066