Mawsoniidae
| Mawsoniids Temporal range:
| |
|---|---|
| |
| Skeleton of a very large specimen of Mawsonia compared to a human | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Sarcopterygii |
| Class: | Actinistia |
| Order: | Coelacanthiformes |
| Suborder: | Latimerioidei
|
| Family: | †Mawsoniidae Schultze 1993 |
| Genera | |
Mawsoniidae is an extinct
supratemporal. Mawsoniids are known from North America, Europe, South America, Africa, Madagascar and Asia. Unlike Latimeriidae, which are exclusively marine, Mawsoniidae were also native to freshwater and brackish environments.[1] Mawsoniids represent among the youngest known coelacanths, with the youngest known remains of the freshwater genus Axelrodichthys from France and an indeterminate marine species from Morocco being from the final stage of the Cretaceous, the Maastrichtian, roughly equivalent in age to the youngest known fossils of latimeriids.[2][3] Species of Mawsonia and Trachymetopon are known to have exceeded 5 metres in length, making them among the largest known bony fish to have ever existed.[4]
Phylogeny
The following cladogram is after Torino, Soto and Perea, 2021.[5]
References
- ^ Cavin, Lionel; Cupello, Camila; Yabumoto, Yoshitaka; Léo, Fragoso; Deersi, Uthumporn; Brito, Paul M. (2019). "Phylogeny and evolutionary history of mawsoniid coelacanths" (PDF). Bulletin of the Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History and Human History, Series A. 17: 3–13.
- PMID 32502171.
- S2CID 233551515.
- PMID 34083600.
- S2CID 233942585.