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Protosphyraena
''Protosphyraena'' is a fossil genus of swordfish-like marine fish, that throve worldwide during the Upper Cretaceous Period (Coniacian-Maastrichtian). 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 (Late Coniacian-Early Campanian). ''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.
==History and taxonomy==
As is the case with many fossil vertebrates discovered by 19th century paleontologists, the taxonomy of ''Protosphyraena'' has had a confusing history. Fossil pectoral spines belonging to this taxon were first recognized in 1822, from chalk deposits in England, by Gideon Mantell, the physician and geologist who also discovered the dinosaur ''Iguanodon''. In 1857, the fish was named ''Protosphyraena ferox'' by the renowned American naturalist and paleontologist, Joseph Leidy, based on Mantell's English finds. Earlier, Leidy had published an illustration of a ''Protosphyraena'' tooth from the Cretaceous-aged Navesink Formation of New Jersey (Maastrichtian), but mistakenly identified is as having come from a dinosaur. During the 1870s, B. F. Mudge, a fossil collector supplying material to rival paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, discovered a number of specimens of ''Protosphyraena'' in Niobrara exposures in Rooks and Ellis counties in Kansas and sent them back east. Between 1873 and 1877, Cope renamed three species based on Mudge's specimens, all of which would eventually be recognized as belonging to the genus ''Protosphyraena'': ''Erisichte nitida'', ''"Portheus" gladius'', and ''"Pelecopterus" pernicciosus''. Between 1895 and 1903, paleontologists in America and England, including Arthur Smith Woodward (1895), Loomis (1900), O. P. Hay (1903), in a series of important works, reviewed the genus, adding much to our understanding of this fish.
Today, two species of ''Protosphyraena'' are recognized from the Niobrara Chalk of the western United States: ''P. nitida'' and ''P. perniciosa''. An additional species, ''P. bentonianum'' was named by Albin Stewart in 1898, based on a specimen from the older Lincoln Member of the Greenhorn Limestone (Upper Cenomanian). Perhaps the oldest remains of ''Protosphyraena'' in North America have come from the upper beds of the Dakota Sandstone (middle Cenomanian) in Russell County, Kansas (Everhart, 2005; p. 91).
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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