Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil • München

Gloria Arratia, Hans-Peter Schultzeand Mark V. H. Wilson

(editors)

Mesozoic Fishes 4Homology and Phylogeny Proceedings of the international meeting

Mirafl ores de la Sierra, 2005

ISBN 978-3-89937-080-5 www.pfeil-verlag.de

The Mesozoic was an important time in the evolution of chondrichthyan and actinopterygian fi shes because it was then that most of the modern groups fi rst entered the fossil record and began to radiate. By the end of the era, many archaic forms had disappeared and the foundation had been laid for the modern diversity of fi shes. Despite this signifi cant evolutionary change, before 1990 there had been little concerted research done on Mesozoic fi shes and no synopsis or compilation of the systematics and paleoecology of Mesozoic fi shes had been published, not even for single groups. To remedy this defi ciency, Gloria ARRATIA organized the fi rst symposium, “Mesozoic Fishes – Systematics and Paleoecology” in Eichstätt, Germany, from August 9 to 12, 1993 and, with G. VIOHL, edited the fi rst volume in the Mesozoic Fishes series. Published in 1996, it included 36 papers about elasmobranchs, actinopterygians, sarcopterygians, and the paleoecology of certain important fossil localities. Gloria ARRATIA and Hans-Peter SCHULTZE organized the second symposium in Buckow, Germany, from July 6 to 10, 1997, and edited the resulting volume “Mesozoic Fishes 2 – Systematics and Fossil Record”, which included 31 papers. Andrea TINTORI, Markus FELBER, and Heinz FURRER organized the third Symposium in Serpiano, Monte San Giorgio, Switzerland, from August 26 to 31, 2001. The results of that symposium in-cluded 33 papers, edited by G. ARRATIA and A. TINTORI and published in “Mesozoic Fishes 3 – Systematics, Paleoenvironments and Biodiversity”.

Francisco José POYATO-ARIZA organized the fourth and most recent Sym-posium on “Mesozoic Fishes – Systematics, Homology and Nomenclature” in Mirafl ores de la Sierra, Madrid, Spain, from August 8 to 14, 2005. The results of that meeting, as presented here in 24 research papers, refl ect the current state of knowledge about Mesozoic fi shes. This volume emphasizes the two major groups of fi shes, actinopterygians (mainly represented by teleosts) and chondrichthyans, that lived during the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, and includes studies on related fi shes up to the present, as well as papers dealing with homology problems in fi shes. New discoveries are pre-sented about fi shes from Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. As illustrated by this volume, there has been recently a fl owering of studies on Cretaceous teleosts, in contrast to the more limited number of studies on chondrichthyans. The new discoveries and the critical evaluation of previous research presented here are an exciting invitation to further research on Mesozoic fi shes.