Today I would like to introduce you to a large prehistoric fish, leedsichthys, and let's take a good omen that there is more than one year after another. Why introduce The Leeds Fish, there must be a gimmick! Yes, there must be: first, the Leeds fish have been placed by the BBC on satellites to be placed on a scale with blue whales; second, the Leeds fish are indeed big enough to sit on the top spot of the bony fish.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > difficult to identify</h1>
Leeds fish was first found in 19th-century Britain by a nobleman named Alfred Nicholson Leeds. As a landed aristocrat (it should feel like an old British aristocrat like Downton Abbey, but only a small nobleman), Leeds did not farm and could spend a lot of time on his hobby of collecting fossils.
Photo note: Leeds, the discoverer of the Leeds fish, image from the web
In a loam pit near Peterborough, huge fossils were found in Leeds. In May 1886, John Whitaker Hulk, after looking at the fossils found in Leeds, believed that it belonged to Rysaurus, a ryosaur of the Stegosaurus family.
Since Halk said it was a Ryzen, it was a Ryzen, and Liz didn't think much about it. On August 22, 1888, the famous American paleontologist Marsh, that is, the one who fought the "fossil war" with Kopp, came to visit Britain and was invited to Leeds' house by the way. The master was indeed a master, and Marsh could see at a glance that the fossils belonged to a giant prehistoric fish rather than a dinosaur, but Marsh, who passed by, did not have time to study it.
Image note: The big fish fossil that is mistaken for a sharp dragon, the picture comes from the internet
News of Leeds' discovery of the prehistoric big fish soon spread throughout Britain, and two months later, ichthyologist Arthur Smith Woodward knocked on the door of Leeds' house. As an expert in ichthyology, Woodward studied the fossil and named it Leedsichthys problematicus the following year, with a genus name dedicated to the discoverer Leeds, and the model species name representing different scholars' different views on its fossils.
Image note: Woodward, the name of the Leeds fish, image from the web
After the Leeds fish was named, a group of scholars ran out and declared: "The name is too obscure, not British at all, it has to be changed!" So Woodward renamed the leeds fish "Leedsia", but the name is not used to this day, we still use "Leedsichthys", which is a good name that conforms to the naming rules.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > fossils are red</h1>
It was a great honor to have his name used to name an ancient creature, and Leeds continued to work on it and began to devote more energy to the search for fossils of Leeds fish. Leeds was a man of both in and out, and in addition to buying fossils he also sold fossils, which he was in
Leeds also had rivals, and a collector named Henry Keeping also had the idea of a Leeds fish fossil, who bought a fossil of the dorsal fin of a Leeds fish at a low price by fooling the miners, and then sold the fossil to Cambridge University. In 1901, the famous German paleontologist Friedrich von Huene saw this fossil when he visited cambridge university, and he mistakenly believed that it belonged to rysosaurs.
Fossils of The Leeds Fish have been discovered for the next 100 years, but none of them can compare with the 2001 discoveries. In 2001, valuable Leeds fish fossils were found at fossil sites known as "star craters". Since the fossils of Leeds fish are often found here, people think of the advertising slogan of the famous electrical brand Ariston water heater "on and on and on", which is not like the discovery of Liz fish fossils, simply call the newly discovered fossil "Ariston" (Ariston).
Illustration: Staff are digging for fossils, image from the web
Researchers are protecting fossils of Leeds fish, image from the web
From 2002 to 2004, Jeff Liston, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, led the excavation of Ariston, where tens of thousands of tons of dirt were removed and eventually the fossils were cleared. During the excavations, British Radio Four recorded and produced "The Big Monster Dig" on television. At a time when the BBC's "Sea Monsters" was a worldwide hit (which included the Leeds Fish), the Leeds Fish became a hit.
Illustration: Fossils of Leeds fish in the lab, picture from the web
Illustration: Staff are working on a restoration of the fossils of the Leeds fish, image from the Internet
< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > put a large satellite</h1>
In the BBC filming of Walking with Sea Monsters, the length of the Leeds fish is set to be
Photo note: BBC "Walking with the Sea Monster" stills, compared to people, the satellite version of the Leeds fish is really large, the image is from the official BBC website
Photo note: The BBC-made Leeds fish has a significant error in its abdominal fin, and studies have shown that Leeds fish do not have an abdominal fin but have an fin, the image is from the official BBC website
In fact, there has been controversy about the size of the Leeds fish, with Woodward first estimating its length at the earliest
When the more complete "Ariston" was discovered, Liston pointed out that Woodward's claim was reasonable, and then he analyzed a large number of fossils to come up with an age-to-body comparison: the 20-year-old Leeds fish was 10 meters long, the 31-year-old Leeds fish was between 11.4 and 14.9 meters long, and the 45-year-old Leeds fish was 16.5 meters long. In fact, this does not mean that the maximum size of Leeds fish is 16.5 meters, but the maximum age individual we found reached this length. If 50-year-old Leeds fish are found, they are definitely bigger.
Illustration Note:
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > a Jurassic mid-sea vacuum cleaner</h1>
The large Leeds fish were gentle filter eaters, and their lifestyle was much like today's whale sharks and basking sharks, swimming around the sea with their mouths wide open all day. Seawater enters from the large mouth of the Leeds fish with plankton, algae, jellyfish, small fish and shrimp, etc., and is then discharged from its gills. The gills of Leeds fish are special, acting like a strainer that can leave food behind. In order to be able to eat more, the Leeds fish will also dive into the seabed to stir up the sediment, and then filter the flora and fauna in it.
Image note: Basking sharks that filter feeding in the sea, Liz fish have similar feeding behavior, image from the internet
Leeds fish lived 160 million years ago, its fossils have been found not only in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and even thousands of miles away in Chile have found Leeds fish fossils, considering the distance between the land at that time, and the ocean is connected, the discovery of Leeds fish fossils in a long distance is also explained.
Leeds fish lived with many famous archaic creatures, including ammonites, sharks, ground lizard crocodiles, big-eyed ichthyosaurs, slippery-toothed dragons, plesiosaurs and more. In the eyes of many animals, the large but not fierce Leeds fish is a floating cafeteria, and the bite marks of the ground lizard crocodile and the slippery toothed dragon have been found on its fossils. For Leeds fish, it grows from a bean-sized egg to a body length of more than one
Note: Slippery Tooth Dragon is the biggest threat to Leeds fish, image from Wiki
King of bony fish
Length
The longest kingfish today may be the same length as the Leeds fish, but the weight is not an order of magnitude at all, and the picture comes from the network
< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > king of bony fish, the Leeds fish</h1>
< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > references:</h1>
1. Woodward, A.S., 1889, "Notes on some new and little-known British Jurassic Fishes", Annals of the Magazine of natural History,series 6, 4: 405-407
2.Liston, J., Newbrey, M., Challands, T., and Adams, C., 2013, "Growth, age and size of the Jurassic pachycormid Leedsichthys problematicus (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii) in: Arratia, G., Schultze, H. and Mesozoic Fishes 5 – Global Diversity and Evolution.Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil,
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