''Koonwarria manifrons'' is an extinct species of

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 ...

that lived in a polar lake in what is now

Koonwarra, Victoria Koonwarra is a town in the South Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia. At the , Koonwarra had a population of 404. The town straddles the South Gippsland Highway. Located around 128 km southeast of Melbourne, the town was served by ra ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

during the

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous (geochronology, geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphy, chronostratigraphic name) is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 143.1 ...

epoch. Fossils have been retrieved from the

Strzelecki Group The Halibut Field is an oil field, within the Gippsland Basin offshore of the Australian state of Victoria (Australia), Victoria. The oil field is located approximately 64 km offshore of southeastern Australia. The total area of this field ...

.Waldman, Michael. Fish from the freshwater Lower Cretaceous of Victoria, Australia: with comments on the palaeo-environment. No. 9. Palaeontological Association, 1971

/ref> ''Koonwarria manifrons'' shares many anatomical similarities with the family

Archaeomaenidae Archaeomaenidae is an extinct family of stem group, stem-teleost fish found in freshwater environments of Jurassic New South Wales of Australia, China, and Antarctica, and in Lower Cretaceous New South Wales and Mongolia. Archaeomaenidae was ori ...

, and is assumed to be descended from the archaeomaenids, but, is regarded as distinct enough to be placed in its own monotypic family, Koonwarriidae.

References

External links

* Prehistoric teleostei Prehistoric ray-finned fish genera Early Cretaceous bony fish Early Cretaceous animals of Oceania Early Cretaceous Australia Cretaceous fish of Australia Aptian genera Fossil taxa described in 1971 {{Cretaceous-fish-stub