Chinlea is an extinct genus of late Triassic Mawsoniid coelacanth fish found in and named after the Chinle Formation that crops out in the southwestern states of Arizona and New Mexico. The word “Chinle” comes from the Navajo word meaning "flowing out", referencing the location where water flows out of the Canyon de Chelly. They were also possibly found in the Dockum Group.
Chinlea is an extinct genus of late Triassic Mawsoniid coelacanth fish found in and named after the Chinle Formation that crops out in the southwestern states of Arizona and New Mexico. The word “Chinle” comes from the Navajo word meaning "flowing out", referencing the location where water flows out of the Canyon de Chelly. They were also possibly found in the Dockum Group.
== Discovery and description == thumb|left|Chinlea (middle left) compared to some other prehistoric fish.Chinlea was described by Schaeffer in 1967 from type specimen Chinlea sorenseni (A.M.N.H No. 5652) found in the upper part of the Chinle Formation, Little Valley, San Juan County, Utah. When it was described Chinlea was thought to be most closely related to Dilpurus from the Dockum Group because of their similar basisphenoid, long ossified pleural ribs, pelvic plate and unpaired basal plate shape, and supplementary caudal lobe length. Their long ossified ribs might have been mechanically related to more efficient swimming. However Schaeffer differentiated Chinlea from Dilpurus by its greater posterior extension of the supratemporal; increased ossification of the extrascapulars; a robust antroventral process on the lateral rostral; larger and triangular postorbital; longer dentary with notched posterior border; anteriorly narrowed angular; small, numerous, closely spaced teeth on dentary; large, tusk-like teeth on premaxilla dermopalatine, possibly ectopterygoid, and precoracoid; and no denticles on anterior borders of the dorsal and caudal fins.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).