Abstract
Isolated fish bones were collected in the Middle Eocene sediments extracted from the Gonglangtou mine (43°00.1′N, 126°51.4′E), near Huadian, Jilin Province, China. They mainly belong to the amiid genus Cyclurus Agassiz, 1844. Additionally, catostomids bones were also observed. They may be referred as Plesiomyxocyprinus cf. arratiae Liu and Chang, 2009. Finally, several isolated fin spines and a preoperculum bear testimony to the presence of at least one acanthomorpha and possibly of siluriforms. These fish remains are indicative of freshwater lacustrine conditions, although the fact that all the fish remains were found disarticulated results from a transportation of the bones from the living place of the fishes to the spot where the fossilisation took place.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Prof. Sun Chunlin, Prof. Sun Yuewu and Prof. Sun Ge, of the Research Center for Paleontology and Stratigraphy, Jilin University, for their promotion of this project, and to the former directors of the Gonglangtou coal mine, Liu Yan Xing and Ren Jing Ming, for allowing the collection of fossils. The project was funded by grants from the W. and E. Datz-Stiftung, the Sino-German Joint Group of Paleontology and Geosciences and by the Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt am Main.
The authors wish to thank Dr. Louis P. Taverne and Dr. Norbert Micklich for their helpful suggestions and K. Smith, A. Vogel, Joël Dyon (Paris) and Christian Lemzaouda (Paris) for the production of figures and photos.
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This article is a contribution to the special issue “Messel and the terrestrial Eocene - Proceedings of the 22nd Senckenberg Conference”
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Gaudant, J., Schaal, S.F.K. & Wei, S. A short account on the Eocene fish fauna from Huadian (Jilin Province, China). Palaeobio Palaeoenv 92, 417–423 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-012-0094-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-012-0094-4