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MHB: 4- The Bladefin Marlin

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Extreme Hell Creek Fishing

(Also wanna thank @petitepaleoartist for helping out with the concepts for the design)

#ultra ramblings #my artz #Maryanna's Hell-Bestiary #protosphyraena #hell creek #paleoart

The early Barracuda, Protosphyraena (1857)

Phylum : Chordata Class : Actinopterygii Order : Pachycormiformes Family : Pachycormidae Genus : Protosphyraena Species : P. perniciosa, P. nitida

Late Cretaceous (90 - 70 Ma)

3 m long and 500 kg (size)

Eurasia (map)

Protosphyraena is a fossil genus of swordfish-like marine fish, that throve worldwide during the Upper Cretaceous Period. Though fossil remains of this taxon have been found in both Europe and Asia, it is perhaps best known from the Smoky Hill Member of the Niobrara Chalk Formation of Kansas. Protosphyraena was a large fish, averaging 2–3 metres in length. Protosphyraena shared the Cretaceous oceans with aquatic reptiles, such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, as well as with many other species of extinct predatory fish. The name Protosphyraena is a combination of the Greek word protos ("early") plus Sphyraena, the genus name for barracuda, as paleontologists initially mistook Protosphyraena for an ancestral barracuda. Recent research shows that the genus Protosphyraena is not at all related to the true swordfish-family Xiphiidae, but belongs to the extinct family Pachycormidae.

In its general body plan, Protosphyraena resembled a modern sailfish, though it was smaller with a shorter rostrum, was somewhat less hydrodynamic, and adults possessed large blade-like teeth (adults of living swordfish species are toothless). Complete skeletons of Protosphyraena are relatively rare, but in parts of the Niobrara Chalk, the Mooreville Chalk Formation of Alabama, and other geological formations, fragmentary specimens are quite common and most often include isolated teeth, the distinctive rostrum, and fragments of the long saw-edged pectoral fin first described by Mantell. Usually, portions of the skull and postcranial skeleton are found separately. This preservational bias can be explained by the fact that the skeleton of Protosphyraena was less ossified than that of most bony fishes and tended to be torn apart by scavengers or decay before burial and fossilization. Like most of the Cretaceous marine fauna, Protosphyraena became extinct at the end of the Mesozoic; the resemblance to living swordfish apparently results from convergent evolution.