''Amiopsis'' is an extinct genus of freshwater and marine

ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of sk ...

belonging to the family

Amiidae The Amiidae are a family of basal ray-finned fishes. The bowfin and the eyespot bowfin ('' Amia ocellicauda'') are the only two species to survive today, although additional species in all four subfamilies of Amiidae are known from Jurassic, Cre ...

, making it closely related to the modern

bowfin The ruddy bowfin (''Amia calva'') is a ray-finned fish native to North America. Common names include mudfish, mud pike, dogfish, grindle, grinnel, swamp trout, and choupique. It is regarded as a relict, being one of only two surviving species ...

.The Paleobiology Database ''Amiopsis'' entry
/ref> Fossils are known from the Late Jurassic

Solnhofen Limestone The Solnhofen Limestone or Solnhofen Plattenkalk, formally known as the Altmühltal Formation, is a Jurassic Konservat-Lagerstätte that preserves a rare assemblage of fossilized organisms, including highly detailed imprints of soft bodied organi ...

, Germany (''A. lepidota),'' the Early Cretaceous

Purbeck Group The Purbeck Group is an Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous lithostratigraphy, lithostratigraphic group (stratigraphy), group (a sequence of rock strata) in south-east England. The name is derived from the district known as the Isle of Purbeck in ...

, England (''A. damoni''),

La Pedrera de Rúbies Formation The La Pedrera de Rúbies Formation, also called as La Pedrera de Meià is an Early Cretaceous ( late Berriasian to early Barremian geologic formation in Catalonia, Spain. The formation crops out in the area of the Montsec in the Organyà Bas ...

, Spain (''A. woodwardi'') and Bernnissant ''Iguanodon'' locality, Belgium (''A. dolloi'') and the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of the Balkans (''A. prisca'' type species). The

monophyly In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent comm ...

of the genus is questionable, due to it being based on a single character, "the presence of three or more lateral fossae on each side of most abdominal centra". Remains previously assigned to this genus from the Early Cretaceous Las Hoyas, Spain have been moved into the new genus '' Hispanamia.''

References

† A dagger, obelisk, or obelus is a typographical mark that usually indicates a footnote if an asterisk has already been used. The symbol is also used to indicate death (of people) or extinction (of species or languages). It is one of the mo ...

Prehistoric ray-finned fish genera Late Jurassic bony fish Cretaceous bony fish Late Jurassic fish of Europe Cretaceous fish of Europe Fossils of Belgium Fossils of Spain Fossils of England Fossils of Slovenia Solnhofen fauna Tithonian genus first appearances Cenomanian genus extinctions Fossil taxa described in 1863 {{Jurassic-fish-stub