Tungsenia

Tungsenia is an extinct genus of lobe-finned fish known from the early Devonian Posongchong Formation of Yunnan, South China. It is the earliest and most basal tetrapodomorph known, having a mixture of traits of tetrapodomorphs and basal dipnomorphs. This not only is present in the skull itself but also in the brain which has features much more similar to dipnomorphs than to other early tetrapodomorphs. Due to this, along with a more derived mandible, it is likely that the jaw of tetrapodomorphs evolved earlier than other parts of the head. There is only one species of the genus known; T. paradoxa.

== History and naming == The holotype of Tungsenia (IVPP V10687), along with four referred specimens, was discovered in yellow sandstone layer of the Posongchong Formation in northeastern Yunnan, South China. The description of the genus was not the first time that the material was referenced in the literature. In 1996, Janqing Wang and coauthors described what would later become the holotype along with the lower jaws as a indeterminate member of the family Osteolepidae. This original collection of five specimens were described in 2012 by Jing Lu and coauthors with it being placed as the earliest stem tetrapod in the fossil record. The age of the fossils have been brought up to push the tetrapod fossil record closer to estimated age in which tetrapods and lungfish split off from one another. More material assigned to the genus was later found during fieldwork from the same locality as the previously between the years 2011-2015, with this yielding the postparietal shield of the animal. This new specimen was later described by Jing Lu and coauthors in 2019.