A New Cretaceous Osteoglossomorph Fish from Gansu Province, China

Several specimens of a fossil fish recently collected from Cretaceous deposits near Changma, Gansu Province, China, are here described as a new genus and species of osteoglossomorph, Shuleichthys brachypteryx. This fish is a stem osteoglossomorph that cannot be included in either the Hiodontiformes or Osteoglossiformes without making either order polyphyletic. The fossils from the Changma locality are exceptionally well preserved, and allow many details of the anatomy of the new fish to be described, including the presence of a postpelvic bone, which was previously only known to be present in the living Hiodon. The relationships of the osteoglossomorph fishes are still not well resolved, and the addition of the new species to previous phylogenetic analyses causes even less resolution to be found. However, the new species appears to be more derived than Lycoptera and Paralycoptera, two other well-known stem osteoglossomorphs.