''Cleithrolepis'' is an extinct genus of ray-finned

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

from the

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

. The genus grew to about long. It had a weak lower jaw with teeth only at the tip. ''Cleithrolepis'' lived in rivers, billabongs and lakes in the large braided river system that deposited the

Hawkesbury Sandstone Sydney sandstone is the common name for Sydney Basin Hawkesbury Sandstone, one variety of which is historically known as Yellowblock, and also as "yellow gold" a sedimentary rock named after the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, where this ...

in what is now New South Wales, with fossils found in shale lenses within the sandstone.

References

* Fossils (Smithsonian Handbooks) by David Ward (Page 213)

External links

Fossil of freshwater fish, ''Cleithrolepis granulata''
- Somersby, New South Wales, Middle Triassic, 240 million years ago. Triassic bony fish Prehistoric neopterygii Mesozoic fish of Europe Prehistoric bony fish genera {{paleo-rayfinned-fish-stub