Atlanticopristis
Sign in to saveAtlanticopristis (meaning "Atlantic saw") is an extinct genus of sclerorhynchoid that lived during the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of what is now the Northeast Region of Brazil, between 100.5 and 93.9 million years ago. It contains a single species, Atlanticopristis equatorialis, originally assigned to the closely related genus Onchopristis.
Wikidata facts
- Parent taxon
- Sclerorhynchidae
- Image
- Sawfish Teeth Comparison by PaleoGeek.svg
Show 6 more facts
- taxon name
- Atlanticopristis
- taxon rank
- genus
- start time
- 100500000-
- end time
- 93900000-0
- Commons category
- Atlanticopristis
- short name
- Atlanticopristis
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
5 sectionsContents
- Discovery and naming
- Description
- Classification
- Paleoecology
- References
Atlanticopristis (meaning "Atlantic saw") is an extinct genus of sclerorhynchoid that lived during the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of what is now the Northeast Region of Brazil, between 100.5 and 93.9 million years ago. It contains a single species, Atlanticopristis equatorialis, originally assigned to the closely related genus Onchopristis.
Similar to modern sawfish, it would have had a long snout armed with modified fish scales shaped into "teeth", but the rostral denticles of Atlanticopristis had barbs on both sides. Atlanticopristis inhabited fresh to brackish water estuaries near large conifer forests, and lived in the same time and place as many species of bony fish, cartilaginous fish, and lobe finned fish, as well as some crocodilians, and several dinosaurs. Many of the taxa present in the Alcântara Formation are also known from the same-aged Kem Kem Beds in Morocco, due to the past connection of South America and Africa into the supercontinent Gondwana.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Atlanticopristis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.