#hyneria

Today's animal of the day is Hyneria lindae!

Image credit: BBC Studios (Walking With Monsters)

This species of large lobe-finned fish lived during the Devonian period, around 372.15-358.86 million years ago, in what is now Pennsylvania. Its remains were first found near the town of Hyner, Pennsylvania, hence its genus name. Its species name, lindae, was named after Linda Thomson, who is the wife of Keith Stewart Thomson, the paleontologist who formally named and described this giant prehistoric fish. That's actually so sweet. Hyneria lindae has also been found in the town of Emporium, PA, which is where some of my relatives live, so that's super cool!

Image credit: PaleoHistoric on DeviantArt

My Paleozoic is Green!

Canadaspis - Wiwaxia - Pomatrum

Flexicalymene - Eurypterus - Greenops

Xenacanthus - Hyneria - Tully Monster

Diplocaulus - Moschops

As life was first struggling to set foot on land in the Late Devonian Period, there was a predator waiting to snatch it back to the depths: the recently discovered Hyneria udlezinye, a toothy prehistoric fish estimated to have reached up to 9 feet long.

It represents the largest monster fish yet uncovered from this period and appears to have lurked in the brackish waters of the modern-day Waterloo Farm site in South Africa, in wait for its prey. 

An excavation exposed a wall of fossils there in 2016, during road construction, and led to this and a number of other discoveries, including the fossil of an early tetrapod, the massive fish’s likely prey. These early genetic forebears of modern human resembled large salamanders or small alligators and walked on four feet (thus tetrapod)...

Hyneria is a genus of large prehistoric predatory lobe-finned fish which lived throughout the freshwater and brackish environments of what is now North America and Africa during the Famennian stage of the Devonian period some 371 to 358 million years ago. The first remains of hyneria consisting of a dis-articulated partial skull and fragments of the shoulder girdle were found in the Catskill Formation of the Red Hill Shale by Keith Stewart Thomson in 1968. The genus name Hyneria is a reference to the village of Hyner Pennsylvania, near where the first specimen was found, withthe species name lindae being a reference to Keith’s wife. Since then several dozen specimens have been found representing two species in H. lindae and H. udlezinye. Reaching some 6.6 to 13.1ft (2-4m) in length, hyneria sported a heavy skull with ornamented dermal bones and a long shallow lower jaw. The teeth were stout, with those of the premaxilla forming fangs. Its body was covered by cycloid scales. It had large sensory canals to aid in detection of possible prey, as the freshwater environment it inhabited likely was murky and had low visibility. It had powerful fins,‭ ‬but the popularised image of Hyneria using them to crawl across land is to date only speculation.‭ ‬It‭’‬s likely that they would have been of more use while navigating shallow waters and submerged obstacles. In life ‬Hyneria would have acted as a large aquatic predator which feed upon other fish including sharks as well as invertebrates and temnospondyl amphibians.

Art work used can be found at the following links: