According to the latest report of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the research team of Xu Guanghui of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered a new articulated fish 240 million years ago in Luoping, Yunnan Province, China, named the beautiful jade belt fish, and classified it into the family of arch fish. The discovery of the beautiful jade band fish represents one of the world's earliest fossil records of artichial fish, and its discovery provides new fossil evidence to understand the early evolution of whole-bone fish and the origin of the reaming fish.
According to reports, articulated fish include arch fish, hemi-vertebrate fish and squamous fish. The gar eel, which lives in the freshwater environment of Central And North America and Cuba, is a living representative of the order Reamer fish Squamous fish, known as living fossils, providing important information for the study of new fin fish. Neofin fish are the largest evolutionary clade of the suborder Rayfin fish , distributed in almost all aquatic environments on Earth. With the exception of polyfins and sturgeon, all other living spoke-finned fish are neofins. Focusing on the research topic of the origin and early radiation of new fin fish, Xu Guanghui's team has carried out field work at the Yunnan-Guizhou junction in recent years and obtained a batch of well-preserved fossil specimens of new fin fish. Based on four well-preserved fish fossils collected from the Triassic Anni marine strata of Luoping, Yunnan, Xu Guanghui's team named a new species of artichial fish: the beautiful jade belt fish. The name of the genus jade belt fish originates from the jade belt lake under the Baila Mountain in Luoping. The "Lashan Jade Belt" is one of the famous scenic spots recorded by Xu Xiake, a great traveler and geographer of the Ming Dynasty, in Luoping.
The graceful jade band fish is another important discovery of the new fin fish in the Middle Triassic Luoping biota. The Middle Triassic Luoping biota in Yunnan is one of the highest reservoirs of Triassic marine fossils in the world, and has high scientific value in studying the recovery of marine ecosystems after the extinction of organisms at the end of the Permian. The archfish found in the Ropin biota represent the world's earliest fossil record of artichial fish, including the previously discovered Grande Archfish and Sulphur Mountain Fish. In the past, it was classified as the genus St. George's fish in the late Triassic period in Europe, but new research suggests that it is more closely related to the beautiful jade band fish and other arch fish. Chronological stratigraphy studies have shown that the St. George fish in Europe is four million years later than the arch fish in the Luoping biota in China, and the results of branch systematics show that the St. George fish has advanced reaming fish characteristics than the arch fish order. In recent years, successive discoveries of multiple archosaur species in the Triassic strata of the Yunnan-Guizhou region suggest that the early differentiation of artichial fish is much faster than previously thought.
The research has been funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Strategic Pioneering Science and Technology Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Frontier Science Key Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Special Project for the Excavation and Repair of Paleontological Fossils.
Figure 1 Orthographic specimen of beautiful jade striped fish (courtesy of Xu Guanghui)
Fig. 2 Another complete specimen of the beautiful jade striped fish (courtesy of Xu Guanghui)
Figure 3 Restoration of beautiful jade belt fish (courtesy of Xu Guanghui)
Source: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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