Leedsichthys

Uncommon card · No. 149302

Leedsichthys is an extinct genus of pachycormid fish that lived in the oceans of the Middle to Late Jurassic. It was the largest ray-finned fish, and amongst the largest fish known to have ever existed. The first remains of Leedsichthys were identified in the nineteenth century. Especially important were the finds by the British collector Alfred Nicholson Leeds, after whom the genus was named "Leeds' fish" in 1889. The type species is Leedsichthys problematicus. Leedsichthys fossils have been found in England, France, Germany, Argentina and Chile. In 1999, based on the Chilean discoveries, a second species was named Leedsichthys notocetes, but this was later shown to be indistinguishable from L. problematicus. Leedsichthys fossils have been difficult to interpret because the skeletons were not completely made of bone. Large parts consisted of cartilage that did not fossilize. On several occasions the enigmatic large partial remains have been mistaken for stegosaurian dinosaur bones. As...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Jonathan Chen, CC BY-SA 4.0