Belemnacanthus
| Belemnacanthus Temporal range: Givetian
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| B. giganteus | |
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| Genus: | Belemnacanthus
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| Species: | B. giganteus
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| Binomial name | |
| Belemnacanthus giganteus Eastman, 1898
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Belemnacanthus giganteus ("Gigantic arrow-spine") is a large, extinct, barrel-shaped holonematid arthrodire placoderm from Givetian-aged strata of Middle Devonian Eifel, Germany. B. giganteus is known only from the holotype, a 37 centimetres (15 in) portion of a median dorsal plate with a long, somewhat high, arching crest running down the median line of the exterior/dorsal side of the plate. The plate has an ornamentation of ridges that originate from a point posterior to the preserved portion of the median dorsal plate. Before the plate was identified as that of a holonematid, the plate of B. giganteus had been successively described as a tremendous spine of an elasmobranch, an agnathan, and lastly, the plate of an antiarch.[1]
References
- '^ Denison, Robert (1978). Placodermi Volume 2 of Handbook of Paleoichthyology. Stuttgart New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-89574-027-4.
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