Eestilepis
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''Eestilepis prominens'' is a species of
thelodont Thelodonti (from Greek: "nipple teeth")Maisey, John G., Craig Chesek, and David Miller. Discovering fossil fishes. New York: Holt, 1996. is a class of extinct Palaeozoic jawless fishes with distinctive scales instead of large plates of armor. T ...
, a clade of ancient
jawless fish Agnatha (; ) or jawless fish is a paraphyletic infraphylum of animals in the subphylum Vertebrata of the phylum Chordata, characterized by the lack of jaws. The group consists of both extant taxon, living (Cyclostomi, cyclostomes such as hagfish ...
. It is the only species in the genus ''Eestilepis'' and the family Eestilepididae. The species is known from the
Cape Phillips Formation This is a list of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in Nunavut, Canada. References * {{Lists of fossiliferous stratigraphic units in Canada Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territorie ...
of the
Canadian Arctic Archipelago The Arctic Archipelago, also known as the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, is an archipelago lying to the north of the Canadian continental mainland, excluding Greenland (an autonomous territory of the Danish Realm, which is, by itself, much larger ...
, and dates back to the
Sheinwoodian In the geologic timescale, the Sheinwoodian is the age of the Wenlock Epoch of the Silurian Period of the Paleozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon that is comprehended between 433.4 ± 0.8 Ma and 430.5 ± 0.7 Ma (million years ago), approximately ...
age of the
Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of t ...
.


Etymology

''Eestilepis'' is named after Eesti, the
endonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
of
Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
, from which originates co-discoverer
Tiiu Märss Tiiu Märss (until 1970, Tiiu Noppel, born October October 1943, in Elva) is an Estonian geologist and palaeoichthyologist. Education and scientific career Märss attended Uderna Primary School in 1951–1953 and Tallinn 16th Secondary Schoo ...
, and
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
() meaning " scale". The specific epithet ''prominens'' comes from
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
meaning "to stand out", after the height of the median area of the scale crowns.


Material

The holotype, GSC 117198, preserves the anterior half of the specimen as well as a collection of scales. The preserved fragment is long and wide.


References

Thelodonti Thelodonti genera {{paleo-jawless-fish-stub