Bothus parvulus
Creators: name: Gol'din, Pavel
name: Haiduc, Bogdan Stelian
name: Kovalchuk, Oleksandr
name: Górka, Marcin
name: Otryazhyi, Pavlo
name: Brânzilă, Mihai
name: Păun, Elena Ionela
name: Barkaszi, Zoltán
name: Ţibuleac, Paul
name: Răţoi, Bogdan Gabriel
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Pleuronectiformes
Bothidae
Bothus
Bothus parvulus

description: Bothus parvulus (Gorjanović-Kramberger, 1884)   
Figure 3I  
 1970 Caprovesposus sp.; Macarovici, pl. 1, fig. 4.   
 Material and locality. Incomplete skeleton; Româneşti.   
 Description. An incomplete body of a sinistral flatfish (SL ca. 16.5 mm) with a reduced and partly broken caudal peduncle. The body is oval, 7.6 mm wide. The head is deep (5.9 mm or 128% head length) and relatively short (4.6 mm; 28% SL). The skull is asymmetrical, and its neurocranial part is roughly triangular. The small mouth (ca. 5% SL) is oblique, directed 60° to central body axis. The opercle is large and ovoid, and the preopercle is slender and boomerang-shaped. The preserved vertebral column is composed of 35 subrectangular vertebrae, including 10 abdominal and roughly 25 caudal ones. This assumption is based on the length of a vertebra and the total length of the vertebral column. The neural spines are long, and a few anterior abdominal spines bear conspicuous kinks at the bases. Imprints of myorhabdoi are visible at the distal tips of neural and haemal spines. Anterior pterygiophores of the dorsal fin are hourglass shaped. There are 17 principal rays in the caudal fin. The number of rays in other fins is unknown because of incompleteness of the specimen.   
 Comparison. The specimen described is almost identical to those of Bothus parvulus from the Sarmatian s.s. beds of Dolje (Croatia) in size, body and head proportions (Schwarzhans et al., 2017d, fig. 3, table 2), and in the total number of vertebrae. This specimen differs from the Middle Miocene Bothus sp. from the North Caucasus (Carnevale et al., 2006) in having a larger size, a greater number of precaudal vertebrae, a shorter and deeper head, in the shape of the preopercle, and in the structure of anterior neural spine bases.   
 Remarks. The specimen is assigned to Pleuronectoidei based on body shape, asymmetrical skull and the dorsal fin extension over the orbital region (Chapleau, 1993; Carnevale et al., 2006). The presence of myorhabdoi and 17 rays in the caudal fin are diagnostic for Bothidae (Hensley, 1977; Hensley and Ahlstrom, 1984; Carnevale et al., 2006; Schwarzhans et al., 2017d). Relationships between separate taxa within this family based on osteological characters remain not completely resolved (Chapleau, 1993; Chanet and Schultz, 1994). However, the shape of anterior dorsal fin pterygiophores and their insertion into cavities of the supraoccipital crest and the presence of robust rectangular haemal spines (Chanet and Sorbini, 2001; Carnevale et al., 2006) support its assignment to the genus Bothus. A boomerang-shaped preopercle and a kink at the base of anterior neural spines of the dorsal fin (Schwarzhans et al., 2017d) indicate that it is Bothus parvulus.
description: Published as part of Gol'din, Pavel, Haiduc, Bogdan Stelian, Kovalchuk, Oleksandr, Górka, Marcin, Otryazhyi, Pavlo, Brânzilă, Mihai, Păun, Elena Ionela, Barkaszi, Zoltán, Ţibuleac, Paul & Răţoi, Bogdan Gabriel, 2020, The Volhynian (late Middle Miocene) marine fishes and mammals as proxies for the onset of the Eastern Paratethys re-colonisation by vertebrate fauna, pp. 1-20 in Palaeontologia Electronica (a 43) (a 43) 23 (3) on page 8, DOI: 10.26879/1091, http://zenodo.org/record/11192385