Eusthenopteron

Eusthenopteron foordi · Eusthenopteron was a large extinct lobe-finned fish that lived in the sea about 385 million years ago, with fossils found in Canada and northern Europe.

It lived about 383.7 to 372.2 million years ago.

Eusthenopteron
Photo: Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com), CC BY 2.5
Eusthenopteron
Photo: Ghedoghedo, CC BY-SA 3.0
Eusthenopteron
Photo: Vassil, CC0

Taxonomy

KingdomAnimalia
PhylumChordata
ClassSarcopterygii
OrderOsteolepiformes
FamilyTristichopteridae
GenusEusthenopteron
SpeciesEusthenopteron foordi

Where its fossils were found

Quebec and Nunavut (Canada), Latvia, Scotland, England and northwest Russia.

Fun facts

  • Early drawings showed Eusthenopteron crawling onto land, but scientists now think it lived strictly in the water.
  • Around 2,000 Eusthenopteron fossils have been collected from Miguasha, Quebec, Canada.
  • The biggest species, E. jenkinsi, probably reached about 2.1 metres long, and the genus may have weighed around 50 kilograms.
  • Eusthenopteron holds the earliest known fossil evidence of bone marrow, which may be where tetrapod bone marrow came from.

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Facts and taxonomy adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).