Palimphyes is an extinct genus of marine ray-finned fish known from the Paleogene period. It was a euzaphlegid, an extinct family of scombroid fish related to the escolars and snake mackerels.
Taxonomy
The various species lived as deepwater mesopelagic predators throughout the Tethys and Paratethys oceans, with fossils of ten species found in earliest Eocene to Oligocene strata of the Swiss Alps, the Carpathian and Caucasus Mountains, Iran, India, and Turkmenistan.
The following species are known:
- P. chadumicus <small>Daniltshenko, 1960</small> - early Oligocene (Rupelian) of the North Caucasus, Russia (Pshekha Formation) (=P. longirostratus <small>Daniltshenko, 1980</small>)
- P. elongatus <small>(de Blainville, 1818)</small> (type species) - Rupelian of Canton Glarus, Switzerland (Glarner Schiefer Formation)
- P. lanceolatus <small>(Simionescu, 1904)</small> - Rupelian of Romania (=Krambergeria <small>Simionescu, 1904</small>)
- P. leptosomus <small>(Arambourg, 1967)</small> - Middle/Late Eocene (?Priabonian) of Iran (Pabdeh Formation) (=Dipterichthys leptosomus <small>Arambourg, 1967</small>)
- P. misrai <small>Sahni & Choudhary, 1972</small> - early Eocene (Ypresian) of Rajasthan, India (Kapurdi Formation)
- ?P. nematophorus <small>(Arambourg, 1967)</small> - ?Priabonian of Iran (Pabdeh Formation) (=Dipterichthys nematophorus <small>Arambourg, 1967</small>)
- P. originis <small>(Ciobanu, 1976)</small> - Rupelian of Romania (=Dipterichthys originis <small>Ciobanu, 1976</small>)
- P. palaeocenicus <small>Daniltshenko, 1968</small> - earliest Eocene (Ypresian) of Turkmenistan (Danata Formation)
- P. pinnatus <small>Daniltshenko, 1962</small> - middle Eocene (Lutetian) of Georgia (Dabakhan Formation)
- P. pshekhaensis <small>Bannikov, 1993</small> - middle Eocene (Bartonian) of Krasnodar Krai, Russia (Kuma Formation)
- P. stolyarovi <small>Bratishko & Udovychenko, 2013</small> - Rupelian of Kazakhstan (Uzunbas Formation) & Crimea (Kyzyl-Dzhar Beds) [<nowiki/>otolith]
Indeterminate species are also known from the early Oligocene-aged Menilite Formation of Poland and the Czech Republic.
See also
References