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Cabinets of Curiosities at the Old State House
Back in the old days, before the idea of museums being educational centers became commonplace, most museums were more like some rich person’s trinkets collected during vacations packed into glass cases so people could see them. They rarely had signs telling people what anything was, nor was there oftentimes any attempt at organization. Because of the rather haphazard and all-encompassing nature of the displays, they got the name Cabinets of Curiosities.
As time went on, they became more thoughtful and organized, with more attention being spent on telling people what the objects were, teaching people about them, and properly preserving the objects for posterity.
The Old State House Museum in Little Rock honors that tradition with an exhibit called “Cabinets of Curiosities: Treasure of the University of Arkansas Museum Collection.” I am sad to say that the exhibit has been up since March 11 of 2017, but I have only recently learned about it and have gone to see it. Truth be told, the only reason I found out about it was because I went to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville to see the Hazen Mammoth fossils and found that the lower jaw of that mammoth was on display in Little Rock.
The reason I am sad to say this is because the exhibit is well worth your time to go see. If I had known about it earlier, I would definitely have discussed it here by now. I was told it will still be at the museum for another year, so you still have time. It is free, so go. Spend a Saturday downtown and explore the exhibit. Then go see what else is down there, which is plenty to keep you busy over the weekend.
What will you see when you are there? To begin with, you might want to ask directions from their helpful and friendly staff, because the exhibit is upstairs in a side gallery that you might miss if you didn’t know it was there.
The objects are from the University of Arkansas Museum at Fayetteville, which, sadly, closed its doors in 2003. As a result, if you want to see their collections, you have to make an appointment to see the warehoused collections. Or you can see a small part of them in this exhibit. The museum had collections from all over the world covering many subjects, which the exhibit honors by having selections of a wide range. It is like a mini-museum of anthropology and natural history.
I am a fossil guy, so I am going to focus on the fossils you can see. The fossils are mostly in the first two rooms that you enter in the exhibit. In the first room, under the horns of a large cervid (the family containing deer, elk, and moose), are two cabinets of invertebrate fossils and minerals. There are some nice fossils to see. You can see a crinoid with the calyx, or body, and pinnules, or “fronds”. These are much rarer than the pieces of stalks we normally find throughout the Ozarks. There is also a starfish, ammonoids, and nice plant fossils, among others.
To the right of this display is a cabinet containing the skulls of a musk ox and Smilodon (saber-toothed tiger), a couple of large, straight-shelled nautiloids, and one of the bones of Arkansaurus, which up until very recently, was the only known dinosaur found in Arkansas.
On the other side of the room, you can see the bones of an elephant leg and a cabinet full of geology specimens, including one enormous quartz crystal that would not be allowed as a carry-on for some planes because it is too big to fit.
The next room contains case with the leg bones of a camel, lion, dog, and cat. It also contains the pieces of mammoth that I came to see. But before you get to that case, you have to pass a giant clam that could fit a child, or even a small adult if they curled up.
The other side of the room contains the skulls of a bison and rhino, a whale rib, and an entire icthyosaur from Germany. The end of the room has the skulls of a bear and walrus, complete with tusks, and the skeletons of a bat and snake.
The final part of the fossil and biology section that I was most interested in was an old display of horse evolution. If made today, it would probably look substantially different because of all the new data we have gotten since that display was made; but except for a few very minor details, the essential facts would be the same.
Of course, there is much more to the exhibit than what I have presented here, such as this cool whalebone armor and cavalry sword, so spend some time checking out the rest of the exhibit and the museum.
There is one thing that the exhibit could have capitalized on, but didn’t (mainly because they didn’t know about it, but also because they were trying to stay with the whole cabinets of curiosity motif), was that many of the fossils and biology specimens have fossil counterparts that have been found in Arkansas. For instance, we have fossil Smilodons, musk oxen, whales, several mastodons, giant deer and giant snakes, and much more.
So here is my question to you. How many people would pay for a special tour of the exhibit that discussed all the cool Arkansas fossils that matched up with the ones on display here. How much would you pay? $10/person? More? Less?
What the Colombian fossil lizard fish has in common with the Arkansas saber-toothed herring
Three years ago, a ten year old boy was visiting a monastery in Colombia. Being a curious boy, he looked around at his surroundings. He could have done like others have done for centuries and not paid that much attention to the stones upon which he walked, but he didn’t. He noticed a curious fossil fish in one of the flagstones. Most people, if they noticed it at all, would have simply given it a passing nod of interest. He, on the other hand, took a picture of it and sent it to the local Paleontology Research Center to see if they knew what it was.
Firstly, I amazed they even had a local paleontology research center, most places don’t. Secondly, it is amazing that the boy took the time to bring it to their attention. Thirdly, it is amazing that someone there noticed what they had and brought it to the attention of the needed experts. All these amazing, unusual occurrences have resulted in an article in the January 31 edition of the Journal of Systematic Paleontology detailing the new fossil species discovered by that boy. Sadly, no one knows how to contact him to let him know about the publication. The researchers have his name and email, but have apparently been unable to contact him to give him his copy of the paper about his fish.
The fish he discovered was named Candelarhynchus padillai, after the Monastery of LaCandelaria near Ráquira, Colombia, where it was found. The stone for the flagstone came from a nearby quarry. According to the authors of the paper, the rocks in the quarry corresponding to the flagstones were “fossiliferous, finely laminated, light to dark grey, indurated mudstones ofthe lower-middle Tuonian San Rafael Formation…” The rock strata also contained numerous plankton, ammonites, clams, and crabs; so quite a rich fauna. The Turonian is 89.8-93.9 Mya, according to the latest GSA time scale, so we are talking roughly 92 Mya.
The fossil is excellently preserved, with slabs containing both part and counterpart, meaning that when they split the slab, pieces and impressions were left on both sides. The whole body can be seen, with nice detail around the head, as well as impressions of the soft tissue portions of the fins. At 27 cm (just over one foot), it is a decent-sized fish. It’s a thin fish, with a long skull full of tiny, conical teeth. It was clearly a fast-swimming predator, and likely prey for a lot of larger species.
The reports on the fish said that it does not have any living relatives. That is true, in a way, but also not. The specific family the phylogenetic analysis placed it in is Dercetidae, an extinct family that all died out in the Cretaceous. However, if we look a bit broader, it is in the Order Aulopiformes. This order is mostly known for a variety of mostly deep water fish known as lizard fishes, which is why all the news reports of this find have said Candelarynchus was a “lizard fish.” Even though it is in the same Order, it is not in the same family as any of the modern lizard fish.
But the title of this post mentioned Arkansas and I have thus far not done so. Vernygora reports that current analyses of fossil aulopiforms include three main families: the Dercetidae, Halecidae, and the Enchodontidae. One of the most prominent Cretaceous fish from Arkansas is Enchodus, commonly called the “saber-toothed herring.”
This is a terrible name because Enchodus has nothing to do with herrings. It was at one time considered part of Salmoniformes, making it closer to salmon. However, more recent analyses have consistently placed it in Aulopiformes, specifically within the Enchodontidae, making it closer to lizard fish. This makes a good deal of sense to me because, if you add the fangs from a payara, commonly known as the vampire fish, onto a lizard fish, you have pretty good idea of what Enchodus was like.
Payara. Image credit Exotic Fish Wiki
Fossil lizard fish then were quite abundant in the Late Cretaceous in both worldwide range and diversity. They may not be the most recognized fish today, but they have a long history and make for great fossils that can be found in a lot of places, including southwestern Arkansas.
The giant Arkansas fossil catfish
Did you know that Arkansas once had catfish more than three meters long and weighing, depending on who you believe, as much as 450 kg? That makes the world record catfish of today look positively puny.
The proof can be found at the Arkansas Geological Survey. The skull of one such monster is on display in the second floor display case. It was found in 1983 off Highway 79 near Camden. The bones were pulled from the Claiborne Formation, or more specifically, the Sparta Sand.
The Claiborne Group can be found in much of the South-Central part of the state, as well as on Crowley’s Ridge. It is Eocene in age (34-56 Mya). According to the Arkansas Geological Survey, the Claiborne is primarily non-marine and is comprised of mostly fine-grained rocks ranging from silty clays to medium-grained sandstones, with the occasional lignitic coal bed. The shales usually have the variegated tans and grays often seen in terrestrial sediments, with brown and black organic-enriched layers intermixed. Fossils are common from the units, with plant fossils common, as well as trace fossils. Of particular interest here are the reptile and fish bones that have been found here.
The Sparta Sand in particular is a thick bed that can be several hundred feet think. It is a fine to medium-grained sandstone that is typically light-colored, either a whitish or light gray, with thin beds or brown or grayish sandy clay and lignite. It has been considered an important aquifer for the region. The sediment is thought to have been laid down by rivers during a regression of the marine shoreline farther south. In other words, we are looking at the flood plain of a river meandering its way to the ocean, much like southern Arkansas and Louisiana is today. Only back then, the catfish grew much bigger than they do now.
So what do we know of this fish? We know it was a siluriform catfish, most likely in the Ictaluridae family, along with all the other North American catfish. It was probably something like the giant Mekong river catfish and lived in similar environments. The Eocene was warmer than it is now, so it was likely even more tropical than it is today. Beyond that, we don’t know a lot. The fossil has never been fully studied and described as far as I am aware. In 1983, Dr. John Lundberg, a noted expert in fossil catfish and currently chief curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, corresponded with the AGS about studying it, but thus far, I don’t know what, if anything, came of it.
National Fossil Day
Today is National Fossil Day™. The National Park Service holds this annual event on the second Wednesday every year to coincide with Earth Science Week sponsored by the American Geosciences Institute. Earth Science Week highlights the important role of earth sciences in our everyday lives and “to encourage stewardship of the Earth.” National Fossil Day is, as NPS says, “held to highlight the scientific and educational value of paleontology and the importance of preserving fossils for future generations.”
In honor of the day, I am going to give you a whirlwind tour of some of our most outstanding fossils from all over the state. People may not think of Arkansas as being rich in fossils, but we have a rich natural history spanning 500 million years. To give you a quick summary of the wide array of fossils, just check out the map on the fossil page, reproduced below.
Arkansas Geological Survey regional map, annotated with reported fossils.
The most fossiliferous region in the state is the Ozarks, without a doubt. It is a favorite fossil collecting spot for many people, even though much of the area is national forest or national park owned, which prohibits fossil collecting. Nevertheless, fossils may be collected on any roadcut. I-65 near Leslie has several fossiliferous roadcuts. You are most likely to find abundant examples of crinoids, bryozoans like the screw-shaped Archimedes, clams and brachiopods, ammonoids (mostly goniatites), corals such as horn corals and tabulate corals, as well as the occasional echinoid and trilobite, along with many other types of fossils. This list of fossils makes it plain that the Ozarks are dominated by marine deposits, but you can find the occasional semi-terrestrial deposit loaded with plants like Calamites and Lepidodendron.
Top, left to right: Calamites, spiriferid brachiopod, blastoid echinoderm, goniatite ammonoid. Bottom left to right: Archimedes bryozoan, crinoid with calyx and fronds (very rare, mostly you just find pieces of the stalk).
There are a few fossils that particularly stand out. One is Rayonnoceras, a nautiloid ammonoid, which reached lengths of over two meters, making it one of the longest straight-shelled ammonoids ever found. The other is a shark named Ozarcus. While shark teeth are common, it is rare to find one that preserves parts of the skull and gill supports. At 325 million years, Ozarcus is the oldest one like this ever found and it changed the way we viewed shark evolution, indicating that modern sharks may be an offshoot of bony fish, not the other way around.
We can’t leave the Ozarks without talking about Conard Fissure, a spectacular collection of Pleistocene fossils. Barnum Brown excavated the first chamber of the cave in 1906, pulling out thousands of fossils or all kinds, many of which were new to science. Of course, of all of them, the ones that most people remember were 15 skeletons of Smilodon, the largest of the saber-toothed cats. The one pictured to the right is a cast of one from La Brea, California. All of ours are held at the American Museum of Natural History.
The Ouachita Mountains are not nearly as fossiliferous, but they have two important types of fossils that are commonly found: graptolites (below left) and conodonts (below right, not from AR, Scripto Geologica). Graptolites are thought to be closely related to pterobranchs, which are still living today, even though the graptolites themselves are all from the Paleozoic Era. Most of the time, Graptolites look like pencil marks on slate, but if you find a good one, you can see they are often like serrated files that may come branched or coiled. The reason these are important is because they are hemichordates, the closest group to the chordates, all animals with a spine (either a stiff rod or actual bone). Conodonts, on the other hand, are the closest we have to the earliest vertebrates, looking like nothing so much as a degenerate hagfish.
The coastal plain is quite fossiliferous and has attracted the majority of press because it is here where you will find Cretaceous aged rocks and that means dinosaurs and their compatriots. Here you will find thousands of Exogyra oysters. Scattered among them, you can find numerous shark teeth, along with teeth from Enchodus, the saber-toothed herring (although not really a herring), especially if you look in the chalk beds. You can also find the rare example of hesperornithids, extinct diving birds, as well as fossil crocodilians.
But of course, the main draws here are the marine reptiles and the dinosaurs. Mosasaur vertebrae are not uncommon, although the skulls are. More rarely, one can find plesiosaur (the article only mentions elasmosaurs, which are a type of plesiosaur, but most plesiosaur fossils in Arkansas cannot be identified that closely) vertebrae as well.And then of course are the dinosaurs. We only have a few bones of one, named Arkansaurus, but we have found thousands of footprints of sauropods, the giant long-necked dinosaurs. Since the sauropods that have been found in Texas and Oklahoma are titanosaurs, such as Sauroposeidon, it is a good bet the footprints were made by titanosaurs. A few tracks have also been found of Acrocanthosaurus, a carnivorous dinosaur like looked something like a ridge-backed T. rex. Acrocanthosaurus reached almost 12 meters, so while T. rex was bigger, it wasn’t bigger by much.
Top left: Mosasaur in UT Austin museum. Top right: Plesiosaur vertebra from southern AR. Middle left: reconstruction of Arkansaurus foot. Middle right: statue of Arkansaurus (out of date). Bottom left: Sauropod footprints. Bottom right: Acrocanthosaurus footprint, Earth Times.
The eastern half of the state is dominated by river deposits from the Mississippi River, so the fossils found there are mainly Pleistocene aged, with the exception of a few earlier Paleogene fossils near Crowley’s Ridge. Pleistocene deposits can be found all over the state, as they are the youngest, but are most common in the east. In these deposits, a number of large fossils have been found. A mammoth was found near Hazen, but we have almost two dozen mastodons scattered over the state. I already mentioned Smilodon, but we also have , the giant short-faced bear, dire wolves, giant ground sloths, and even a giant sea snake named Pterosphenus. Most unusual of all is a specimen of Basilosaurus, which despite its name meaning king lizard, was actually one of the first whales. Considering the month, I would be remiss not to include Bootherium, also known as Harlan,s musk ox, or the helmeted musk ox.
Top left: Mastodon on display at Mid-America Museum. Top right: Basilosaurus by Karen Carr. Bottom left: Arctodus simus, Labrea tar pits. Wikipedia. Bottom right: Bootherium, Ohio Historical Society.
This is nowhere near all the fossils that can be found in Arkansas, but it does give a taste of our extensive natural history covering half a billion years. After all, we wouldn’t be the Natural State without a robust natural history. Happy National Fossil Day!
Monday Mysteries
It is long past time I resurrected Monday Mystery fossils. So to celebrate the season, here is a little animal whose relatives, or at least representations thereof, shall be widely seen over the next month.
If you think you know what this is, please leave your identification in the comments. I will let everyone know what it is and where fossils like this have been found in Arkansas on Friday. Have a great October!
Prehistoric Shark Week, Day 5: From Whence the Great White?
Greetings and welcome to the final day of Prehistoric Shark Week! All week we have covered sharks that swam in Arkansas during the Cretaceous Period. The dinosaurs get all the press, but we had a diverse marine ecology during that time. Last week, we met a few of the non-shark denizens, such as mosasaurs, elasmosaurs, and more. This week, we have seen nurse sharks, goblins, sand tigers, and an array of rays, skates, and angel sharks. We wrap up the festival of marine animals with the question that everyone wants to know. Where did the most famous sharks of all time, the Great White and Megalodon, come from and how does Arkansas play into this?
A collection of galeomorph sharks that made their home in Cretaceous Arkansas and much of the world’s oceans, appropriately scaled.
The Great White, or simply White Shark, is named Carcharodon carcharias, meaning sharp tooth pointer, although more popularly named for its white belly, is well known as the largest living predatory fish in the sea, reaching up to and, probably over, 20 feet. Megalodon, listed either as Carcharocles megalodon or Carcharodon megalodon, depending on whether or not one believes it is directly related to or convergent with White Sharks, is the largest known predatory fish ever, reaching sizes up to three times that of the White Shark. It appeared in the fossil record about 16 Mya, but went extinct 1.6 Mya (contrary to what a fictitious documentary on the Discovery Channel claimed).
During the Cretaceous, the southwestern part of the state was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, which for us, was essentially equated to having the Gulf coast not just on our doorstep, but flooding it. Those waters were warm, rich in nutrients, and a hotbed of marine life. In those waters, a few sharks of interest made their home.
All of the sharks we will be talking about are lamniform sharks. These sharks are known for being at least partially endothermic, meaning they used their core muscles to create their own heat and maintain an elevated body temperature, giving them the ability to be active hunters even in cooler waters. Of course, it also meant they were hungrier, needing more food, keeping them always on the prowl. This is what allows the White to be such a fearsome hunter today, giving it the power and energy to breach completely out of the water during attacks.
Squalicorax is an extinct shark of the time that is commonly thought to have resembled Whites. These sharks got up to five meters, although they were typically around two meters. Squalicorax is also called the Crow Shark, which some people have speculated it got that name from evidence of its scavenging. However, squalus means shark (and is the scientific genus name for dogfish) and corax means crow, so the name Squalicorax literally means crow shark. 
Now as to why it was named that way to begin with, no one knows because when Agassiz named it in 1843, he didn’t leave a record as to why. They hunted and scavenged a wide range of animals, everything from turtles to mosasaurs. Unfortunately, the relationships between Squalicorax and other lamnids is uncertain, so whether or not it could have been ancestral to anything, much less Whites or megalodons, is unknown at present.
Squalicorax. www.elasmo-research.org
Another candidate is a shark named Isurus hastalis, an Oligocene shark that lived 30 Mya. Isurus also includes the modern day mako shark. However, a researcher by the name of Mikael Siverson concluded that the Isurus teeth were not makos, but worn down teeth similar to modern Whites. So he changed the name to Cosmopolitodus. It has also been suggested that these sharks originated from a shark called Isurolamna, which lived in the paleocene 65-55 Mya.
Possible evolutionary sequence of the Great White. http://www.elasmo-research.org
A more recent view, and one which I back (with freely admitted bias because it allows me to say they evolved from Arkansas sharks:) ), is that both Whites and megolodons evolved from an extinct lamnid called Cretolamna, the Cretaceous lamna. This shark had large, strong teeth and was very successful. It had a worldwide distribution and lived from the Cretaceous to the Paleocene. Cretolamna fossils have not been reported in Arkansas thus far, but they were a member of the family Cretoxyrhinidae, of which the shark Serratolamna was a member. The teeth of Cretolamna and Serratolamna are extremely similar, as one might expect from genera in the same family. However, Serratolamna teeth have serrations and Cretolamna does not, making Serratolamna teeth closer in shape to the White Shark. Serratolamna did not have the same worldwide distribution and did not last as long as long as Cretolamna, though. It is impossible to tell which one was directly ancestral to the later sharks, but Cretolamna, due to its more cosmopolitan range, has gotten the nod. It was named first and is much better known than Serratolamna, giving it an edge when people find and identify fossil shark teeth. Thus, it is not a big stretch to say that Serratolamna, or a very close relative, eventually evolved into Carcharodon carcharias as well as Carcharocles (or Carcharodon) megalodon.
Serratolamna gafsana. Wikipedia. Photo by Hectonichus.
I hoped you have enjoyed Prehistoric Shark Week and the previous week of Cretaceous Arkansas marine predators. Let me know if there is another group that you think deserves special consideration for a celebratory week.
Day 4 of Prehistoric Shark Week: Sand Tigers
For Day 4 of Prehistoric Shark Week, I would like to mention another modern day shark that has been around since the Cretaceous: the sand tiger sharks. Tomorrow, I will discuss a couple of Cretaceous sharks that may be the ancestors of the two most famous sharks in the world – the Great White and the giant Megalodon.
Carcharias taurus. Wikipedia. Amada44.
The Sand tiger is a common shark in the Cretaceous sediments, or at least, their teeth are, which means they were probably pretty common back then. The teeth tend to be long and thin, with two small cusps on either side of the large, center blade. Elasmo-branch.org reports that the center blade is smooth-edged with a strongly bilobed root, large bulge in the center of the root (aka lingual protruberance), and nutrient foramen in the center.
There are actually two sharks that are often called sand tigers in the Cretaceous rocks. One is Carcharias holmdelensis, the Cretaceous version of Carcharias taurus, the modern day sand tiger shark. Also going by the name grey nurse shark, amid several others, sand tigers are large-bodied sharks that will eat pretty much anything, but since it is a fairly slow and placid shark most of the time, it doesn’t seem to go after anything that requires a lot of effort. They are known for gulping air to allow themselves to float in the water column without expending much effort. So although they look scary, they appear to be too lazy to live up to appearances.
Odontaspis ferox
The other shark that gets called a sand tiger, is Odontaspis aculeatus, one of the ragged toothed sharks, which also go by the name sand tiger. These sharks were until recently in the same family as Carcharias, but have since been pulled out into their own family. They are very similar, as one might has guessed from the numerous times these sharks have been grouped and split over the years. As Elasmo-research.org put it, “Chaos reigned until Leonard Compagno examined museum specimens from all over the world, corrected misidentifications and sorted out synonyms.”
Prehistoric Shark Week, Day 3: Flat Fish
For Day 3 (a little late, yes) of Prehistoric Shark Week, I want to bring to your attention the diversity of chondrichthyans that have opted for a flatter bauplan.
Ray tooth
Sharks are generally split into two groups, the galeomorphs, which are mostly the more typical torpedo-shaped sharks, including the sharks that most people think of when they envision a shark. The other group is the squalimorphs. These sharks lack an anal fin and many of them have developed a penchant for flatter bodies and broad pectoral fins, and in some cases pelvic fins as well (although not all, such as the dogfish and frilled sharks). Up until recently, the batoids, otherwise known as skates and rays, were considered part of this group, the consensus being that they were a more specialized type of squalimorph shark that had taken flat to an extreme. But the most recent molecular studies have indicated that they are a group unto themselves. The batoids have a long fossil history, with a number of ray teeth found in the Cretaceous deposits of Arkansas, particularly the eagle ray family Myliobatidae. Their teeth are typically flat rectangles on top with a comb-like surface below. Another type of ray that can be found are the guitarfish, or Rhinobatos casieri. These pectoral fins of these fish extend to their head, giving them a triangular shaped front end of a more traditional shark-like back end.
Shark classification.
Skates and rays are generally very docile and would not be very threatening, spending their time scrounging about on the sea floor for benthic (living in or on the sea floor) invertebrates and the occasional fish. The same can’t be said for the last member of this group, the sawfish. Armed with a rostrum (its elongated snout) with teeth out to the side, the fish looks like it has a chain saw for a nose. The sawfish will swim into a school of fish and thrash its rostrum rapidly back and forth, spearing and stunning several fish, which it can then gobble up. They can also use it to dig up clams and crabs from the sediment. While they won’t attack humans, any human who provoked one may easily wind up perforated by the rostrum, probably not deadly but certainly painful. Most modern sawfish reach a respectable two meters, but the largest species, the green sawfish (Pristis zijsron) can top seven meters (24 feet). This is as large as the Cretaceous versions. Modern sawfish are typically put into the family Pristiformes. The Cretaceous ones are in their own family, called Sclerorhynchiformes and are not directly related, in that the Cretaceous ones are not thought to be ancestral to the modern ones. They are both put into the group Pristirajea, so they are thought to at least be related. But with the uncertainties in the relationships of the modern fish, the relationships with fossil forms are necessarily less certain. In any case, Arkansas sports several different species from this group, including Schizorhiza stromeri, Sclerorhynchus sp., Ischyrhiza mira, Ischyrhiza avonicola, and Ptychotrygon vermiculata. We were postively awash in sawfish.
Onchopristis. Cretaceous. Sawfishconservationsocietyblogspot.com
The true squalimorph sharks that have shown up in the Arkansas Cretaceous rocks are best represented by the Angel shark (Squatina hassei), which looks like an early rendition of a skate, so it is little wonder that most researchers viewed skates and rays as simply more specialized versions of these sharks. Nevertheless, it appears this is case of convergence, not homology (similarity due to relationship). If it is homologous, it isn’t directly so. It is possible both groups had a common slightly flattened ancestor and each took their own route from there.
Rhinobatos hakelensis. Cretaceous guitarfish. Fossilmuseum.net
All of these fish are pretty docile hunters, scrounging around the sea floor for benthic organisms, all those animals that make their home in or on the sea floor sediments. They spend their time digging around the sand for crabs, clams, and other invertebrates, the occasional fish. When threatened by the presence of a predator, they hide on the bottom, using their shape to help them blend in with the seafloor. Neither the ones today or the ones in the Cretaceous would have bothered a human swimming around them.
Becker, Martin A., Chamberlain, John A., Wolp, George E. 2006. Chondricthyans from the Arkadelphia Formation (Upper Cretaceous: Upper Maastrichtian) of Hot Spring County, Arkansas
Prehistoric Shark Week
This week we will celebrate fossil sharks of the Mesozoic that have been found in Arkansas. Because all of our surface rocks of the period are from the Cretaceous, the sharks are limited to that time. There are other cool sharks from the Paleozoic, but they will have to wait for another time. Hunting for shark teeth in Arkansas can best be done in the chalk formations called the Annona and Saratoga in southwest Arkansas. But you can also find them in several other formations as well.
Many of the sharks found in the Cretaceous in Arkansas have contemporary species. While the species may vary, the genus name is very long-lived. For those who are unaware, scientific names follow a binomial system, with a genus and a species name, the genus being the first name and indicating a group of very closely related species. It is next to impossible to tell the difference between species of sharks just by their teeth unless, and many times even if, one is an expert, so I will be sticking with the genus names.
To begin the week, I present to you Ginglymostoma, the nurse shark.
The scientific name comes from the shape of its mouth. The origin of the name nurse shark is not clear, but it is considered likely to have originated with the Old English word Hurse, for sea floor shark.
Known for its puckered mouth and barbels on the sides of its mouth, nurse sharks spend most of their time near the sea floor scrounging for whatever small animal they can catch. They are very docile and will only bite if provoked. Humans are far too big for nurse sharks to be interested in, so unless one really goes out of their way to annoy a nurse shark, you’re pretty safe, even from the largest ones, which can get over 4 meters.
Day 4 of Paleo-Animal Fest
Welcome to Day 4 of Paleo-Animal Fest, celebrating the creatures populating the Arkansas seas during the Cretaceous. Today we are going to look at a fish that has survived for an amazingly long time. They first appeared in the Late Cretaceous and have survived to the present day, still thriving. You can find them in many freshwater lakes and rivers, especially brackish and hypoxic (low oxygen) waters, even into marine waters on the occasion. They are a tough predator in many ways, from their durability in the fossil record to their physical defenses and their intimidating jaws. I am of course talking about gars.
This thing looks like a prehistoric crocodile. My.core.com/~garman/garanglershome.htm
Gars are piscivorous, meaning they eat other fish. The most common description of them is “voracious predator.” They are known for their tooth-filled jaws, scales of armor, and their fight. Their typical mode of attack is a lightning-quick sideways bite. Gar fishermen are often called “not right in the head.”
Gars can be found in many places within North America, but their fossils can be found all over the world. The vast majority of the fossils have been identified as Lepisosteus, which includes the longnose, shortnose, spotted, and Florida gar. However, most of their fossils are isolated scales, which makes it difficult to impossible to tell what type of gar it is from. So I am going to go with most people’s favorite gar, Atractosteus spatula, the alligator gar (pictured above). It is the biggest one reaching almost 3 meters. Another impressive armored, ancient fish that is still around is the sturgeon, which can get a lot bigger, but are nowhere near as impressive in the teeth department.
Ganoid scales
There are not a lot of skeletons of gars with heads and tails, but there are a lot of body pieces covered in scales. Gar scales are thick, rhomboid-shaped ganoid scales, meaning they are covered in what is effectively enamel. The scales form an excellent armor, making handling them hard on the hands. They are so tough and dense, in fact, that the scales have been used as arrowheads and make even CT scans on gars hard to impossible to get decent views. On the plus side, this results in them having excellent preservational potential and can be found quite commonly. The scales make the fossils really stand out and readily identifiable to at least the group Lepisosteiformes.
Lepisosteus simplex. FossilMuseum.net
By far, the most complete and detailed description of gars ever published is by Lance Grande, the universally acknowledged leading world expert on fossil fish, called “An empirical synthetic pattern study of gars (Lepisosteiformes) and closely related species, based mostly on skeletal anatomy. The resurrection of Holostei.” Special publication 6 of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, published in 2010. This is a massive tome, amassing almost 900 pages of detailed observation on gars. This book is a companion to a similar volume he did on bowfins. I can honestly say I have never seen a more thorough job on any group such as this in my life. Every time I look at it, I think wow, all this on just gars? This would make any scientist proud to have one of these capping their life’s work and this doesn’t even begin to touch the work put out by Grande. I am in awe.
paleoaerie 