Cooleyella
Cooleyella is an extinct genus of shark which lived from the Carboniferous to the Permian of the United States, Russia, UK and Oman. Several species have been described. It is currently the only genus placed in the family Anachronistidae.
| Cooleyella Temporal range: Carboniferous–Permian | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Chondrichthyes |
| Infraclass: | Euselachii |
| Clade: | Neoselachii |
| Family: | †Anachronistidae Duffin & Ward, 1983 |
| Genus: | †Cooleyella Gunnell, 1933 |
| Type species | |
| Cooleyella peculiaris Gunnell 1933 | |
| Species | |
| |
| Synonyms | |
| |
Taxonomy
The genus Cooleyella was erected in 1933 by Frank H. Gunnell, who described and named six species (C. spatulata, C. peculiaris, C. quinqueloba, C. quadrilobata, C. simplex and C. cuspidata) within the same paper. The genus name honors Miss Maude Cooley. These species were all established based on fossils from Carboniferous deposits in Missouri and Kansas. Gunnell assigned the genus to the order Selachii, but did not place it within any family.[1]
In 1983, Duffin and Ward described the genus Anachronistes and established A. fordi as the type species based on teeth collected from Viséan-aged deposits of the Eyam Limestone in Derbyshire, England and Esclusham Mountain, Wales. The family Anachronistidae was also erected with Anachronistes as its sole member, and placed in the clade Neoselachii. The genus name is derived from the Greek anachronismos (meaning 'out of time'), referring to its early stratigraphic position in relation to other known neoselachians at the time.[2][3]
Later in 1996, Duffin (along with two other authors) would describe the species Cooleyella amazonensis and assign the genus Cooleyella to the family Anachronistidae, pointing out that he was unaware of Cooleyella when he erected Anachronistes and Anachronistidae. Because the remains of the two are identical at a generic level, Anachronistes was declared a junior synonym of Cooleyella, and Anachronistes fordi was renamed Cooleyella fordi.[4]
References
- Gunnell, Frank H. (1933). "Conodonts and Fish Remains from the Cherokee, Kansas City, and Wabaunsee Groups of Missouri and Kansas". Journal of Paleontology. 7 (3): 261–297. ISSN 0022-3360.
- Duffin, Christopher; Ward, David (1983-01-01). "Neoselachian sharks' teeth from the Lower Carboniferous of Britain and the Lower Permian of the USA". Palaeontology.
- Smith, Roy; Martill, David M.; Duffin, Christopher (2017-06-01). "The shark-beds of the Eyam Limestone Formation (Lower Carboniferous, Viséan) of Steeplehouse Quarry, Wirksworth, Derbyshire, UK". Proceedings of the Geologists' Association. 128 (3): 374–400. doi:10.1016/j.pgeola.2017.04.004. ISSN 0016-7878.
- Duffin, Christopher J.; Richter, Martha; Neis, Pedro Alfredo (1996). "Shark remains from the Late Carboniferous of the Amazon Basin, Brazil". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie – Monatshefte. 1996 (4): 232. ISSN 0028-3630.