DOI: 10.15468/p8s6b9
title: On a remarkable new species of Tharsis, a Late Jurassic teleostean fish from southern Germany: its morphology and phylogenetic relationships

description: This dataset contains the digitized treatments in Plazi based on the original journal article Arratia, Gloria, Schultze, Hans-Peter, Tischlinger, Helmut (2019): On a remarkable new species of Tharsis, a Late Jurassic teleostean fish from southern Germany: its morphology and phylogenetic relationships. Fossil Record 22 (1): 1-23, DOI: 10.5194/fr-22-1-2019, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/fr-22-1-2019Abstract. A complete morphological description, as preservation permits, is provided for a new Late Jurassic fish species (Tharsis elleri) together with a revision and comparison of some morphological features of Tharsis dubius, one of the most common species from the Solnhofen limestone, southern Germany. An emended diagnosis of the genus Tharsis – now including two species – is presented. The new species is characterized by a combination of morphological characters, such as the presence of a complete sclerotic ring formed by two bones placed anterior and posterior to the eye, a moderately short lower jaw with quadrate-mandibular articulation below the anterior half of the orbit, caudal vertebrae with neural and haemal arches fused to their respective vertebral centrum, and parapophyses fused to their respective centrum. A phylogenetic analysis based on 198 characters and 43 taxa is performed. Following the phylogenetic hypothesis, the sister-group relationship Ascalaboidae plus more advanced teleosts stands above the node of Leptolepis coryphaenoides. Both nodes have strong support among teleosts. The results confirm the inclusion of Ascalabos, Ebertichthys and Tharsis as members of this extinct family. Tharsis elleri n. sp. (LSID urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act: 6434E6F5-2DDD-48CF-A2B1-827495FE46E6, date: 13 December 2018) is so far restricted to one Upper Jurassic German locality – Wegscheid Quarry near Schernfeld, Eichstätt – whereas Tharsis dubius is known not only from Wegscheid Quarry, but also from different localities in the Upper Jurassic of Bavaria, Germany, and Cerin in France.1 IntroductionLate Jurassic fishes of the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria, southern Germany, have been known for over 500 years and are currently known by 115 (including Ebertichthys) formally described actinopterygian species (Schultze, 2015: table 5). The earliest illustrations showing a fish – which would correspond to what it is currently interpreted as Tharsis dubius (Blainville, 1818) – appeared in the works of Besler (1616), Baier (1757: pl. 3) and Knorr (1755: pl. 23, figs. 2, 3, pl. 26a: figs. 1–4, pl. 28: fig. 2, pl. 29: figs. 2–4; see Tischlinger and Viohl, 2015). A Tharsis specimen is also the oldest known specimen of the Solnhofen limestone, which was collected (Raritätenkabinett zu Ambras; today in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria) in the first half of the 16th century (Tischlinger and Viohl, 2015: fig. 59). Later, fishes illustrated by Knorr were given scientific names by Blainville (1818) and one of them was named Clupea dubia for its overall resemblance to the extant clupeiform genus Clupea.The publication of Blainville (1818) stimulated intensive research on fishes during the 19th century (e.g., Agassiz, 1833–1843; Münster, 1834, 1839a, 1839b, 1842; Wagner, 1861, 1863; Vetter, 1881; Woodward, 1895) that slowed down in the first half of the 20th century to be invigorated in the second half of the 20th century, especially concerning the study of Jurassic fossil fishes of the Solnhofen Limestone. For example, Nybelin (1964, 1967, 1974) and Arratia (1987a, 1987b, 1997, 1999, 2000) proposed fundamental changes to the taxonomy of teleosts from the region, and Patterson (1975, 1977), Patterson and Rosen (1977), and Arratia (1991, 1997) provided additional morphological information of some of the teleostean species. Up to 2015, the number of nominal species of teleosts including pachycormiforms and aspidorhynchiforms was 45 (Schultze, 2015). Expectations are that this number will increase because many others remain to be described.Figure 1. Distribution of plattenkalk basins and reef areas in the southern Franconian Jura during the early Tithonian (modified from Viohl, 1996 with the addition of new localities). The new fish described herein was recovered in the Wegscheid Quarry, near Schernfeld.The goals of this contribution are to describe a new species of Tharsis Giebel, 1848 from Wegscheid Quarry near Schernfeld, near Eichstätt, Bavaria, in the Solnhofen limestone (Fig. 1), including a comparison with Tharsis dubius, and to test their phylogenetic position among teleosts. Wegscheid Quarry is the largest quarry within the Eichstätt mining area close to the well-known quarries of Eichstätt–Blumenberg. At present, it is an open pit mine with a diameter of up to 750 m. The area was quarried for decades and yielded thousands of fossils, among them hundreds of specimens of Tharsis dubius.