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22 August 2019 The Neogene Fossil Record of Aetomylaeus (Elasmobranchii, Myliobatidae) from the Southeastern Pacific
Jaime A. Villafaña, Giuseppe Marramà, Sebastian Hernandez, Jorge D. Carrillo-Briceño, Dirk Hovestadt, Rene Kindlimann, Jürgen Kriwet
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Abstract

The presence of eagle rays of the genus Aetomylaeus in the Neogene of the Temperate Pacific coast of South America (TPSA) still is ambiguous, although the fossil record of elasmobranch fishes (sharks, rays, and skates) from this area is quite good. Here, we present the first unmistakable fossil remains of Aetomylaeus from the Neogene of the TPSA. The material comprises 13 dental plates from one site in Peru and six localities in Chile ranging in age from Miocene to Pliocene and was compared with dental plates of extant species. Our study reveals that the number of tooth rows and the shape of lateral teeth in extant species are seemingly very variable and need to be established before fossil specimens can be confidently identified. Consequently, we do not assign the fossil specimens from the Neogene of the TPSA to any species but leave them as Aetomylaeus. Moreover, we recognized that only the shape of medial teeth provides reliable diagnostic characters in our material, whereas the shape and number of lateral teeth are highly variable, similar to the condition seen in extant species.

© 2019. Jaime A. Villafaña, Giuseppe Marramà, Sebastian Hernandez, Jorge D. Carrillo-Briceño, Dirk Hovestadt, Rene Kindlimann, and Jürgen Kriwet. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Jaime A. Villafaña, Giuseppe Marramà, Sebastian Hernandez, Jorge D. Carrillo-Briceño, Dirk Hovestadt, Rene Kindlimann, and Jürgen Kriwet "The Neogene Fossil Record of Aetomylaeus (Elasmobranchii, Myliobatidae) from the Southeastern Pacific," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 39(1), (22 August 2019). https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2019.1577251
Received: 20 July 2018; Accepted: 28 November 2018; Published: 22 August 2019
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