page_title: Lamprey
section_title: Fossil record
hierarchical_section_title: Lamprey / Classification / Fossil record
caption_attribution_description: English: The Silurian anaspid, Jamoytius kerwoodi of what is now Great Britain. (C) Stanton F. Fink
context_page_description: Lampreys are an ancient extant lineage of jawless fish of the order Petromyzontiformes, placed in the superclass Cyclostomata. The adult lamprey may be characterized by a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth. The common name "lamprey" is probably derived from Latin lampetra, which may mean "stone licker", though the etymology is uncertain. The plural form lamprey is sometimes seen.
  There are about 38 known extant species of lampreys and five known extinct species. Parasitic carnivorous species are the most well-known, and feed by boring into the flesh of other fish to suck their blood; but only 18 species of lampreys engage in this micropredatory lifestyle. Of the 18 carnivorous species, nine migrate from saltwater to freshwater to breed, and nine live exclusively in freshwater. All non-carnivorous forms are freshwater species. Adults of the non-carnivorous species do not feed; they live off reserves acquired as ammocoetes, which they obtain through filter feeding.
context_section_description: Lamprey fossils are rare because cartilage does not fossilize as readily as bone. The first fossil lampreys were originally found in Early Carboniferous limestones, marine sediments in North America: Mayomyzon pieckoensis and Hardistiella montanensis, from the Mississippian Mazon Creek lagerstätte and the Bear Gulch limestone sequence. None of the fossil lampreys found to date have been longer than 10 cm (3,9 inches), and all the Paleozoic forms have been found in marine deposits.
  In the 22 June 2006 issue of Nature, Mee-mann Chang and colleagues reported on a fossil lamprey from the Yixian Formation of Inner Mongolia. The new species, morphologically similar to Carboniferous and other forms, was given the name Mesomyzon mengae ("Meng Qingwen's Mesozoic lamprey").
  The exceedingly well-preserved fossil showed a well-developed sucking oral disk, a relatively long branchial apparatus showing a branchial basket, seven gill pouches, gill arches, and even the impressions of gill filaments, and about 80 myomeres of its musculature. Unlike the North American fossils, its habitat was almost certainly fresh water.
  Months later, a fossil lamprey even older than the Mazon Creek genera was reported from Witteberg Group rocks near Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Dating back 360 Million years, this species, Priscomyzon riniensis, is very similar to lampreys found today.
caption: Jamoytius kerwoodi, a putative lamprey relative from the Silurian
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