2011/09/01 by Ján Fischer, Sebastian Voigt, Jörg W. Schneider +2 · 5 citations
Environmental Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Ichthyology and Marine Biology #Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology #Fish Biology and Ecology Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/02724634.2011.601729
openalex publication_date 2011/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Habitat partitioning and site fidelity of spawning grounds are well-documented phenomena in extant selachians, but little is known about the reproductive strategies of their fossil relatives. Here we describe the selachian fauna of the Middle to Late Triassic Madygen Formation in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, based on several dozen tooth crowns and egg capsules. The material is assigned to three new taxa: Lonchidion ferganensis, sp. nov., and Palaeoxyris alterna, sp. nov., being teeth and egg capsules of hybodontid sharks, and Fayolia sharovi, sp. nov., being egg capsules of probable xenacanthids. Teeth of L. ferganensis, sp. nov., were almost exclusively found in pelecypod-rich shallow lacustrine mudstones and belong to juvenile individuals. Oxygen and strontium isotope data of tooth enameloid indicate freshwater conditions of the ambient water at the time of tooth mineralization. The egg capsules are common findings in near-shore lake deposits as well. Considering the mass co-occurrence of juvenile teeth and egg capsules in the study area, we propose that hybodontid/ xenacanthid sharks recurrently occupied littoral zones of the Madygen lake for spawning. The small number of full-grown individuals points to habitat partitioning of juveniles and adults wherefore the study site is interpreted as a shark nursery. The oviposition strategies inferred from this fossil example are remarkably similar to those of modern sharks, suggesting that the reproductive patterns seen in extant sharks originated well before the Cenozoic.