Isityumzi mlomomde
Isityumzi mlomomde (meaning crushing long mouth in isiXhosa) is a very rare species of lungfish known from palate (parasphenoid) bones, tooth plates associated with incomplete lower jaw remains and scales buried at Waterloo Farm. Isityumzi had a long snout like many Devonian lungfishes, which may have been an adaption to air breathing. It had robust tooth plates which would have been ideally suited for a durophagous lifestyle (eating hard-shelly animals), suggesting that it may have competed against larger Groenlandaspis placoderms for the abundant bivalve molluscs that inhabited the estuary. It provides the first high-latitude record of an early Palaeozoic lungfish. Further reading: Gess, R. W., & Clement, A. M. (2019). A high latitude Devonian lungfish, from the Famennian of South Africa. PeerJ, 7, e8073. |
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