''Luoxiongichthys'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of basal actinopterygian (ray-finned fish) known from the lower

Middle Triassic In the geologic timescale, the Middle Triassic is the second of three epoch (geology), epochs of the Triassic period (geology), period or the middle of three series (stratigraphy), series in which the Triassic system (stratigraphy), system is di ...

(Pelsonian substage,

Anisian In the geologic timescale, the Anisian is the lower stage (stratigraphy), stage or earliest geologic age, age of the Middle Triassic series (stratigraphy), series or geologic epoch, epoch and lasted from million years ago until million years ag ...

stage) of Luoxiong Town,

Luoping County Luoping County () is located in Qujing City, in eastern Yunnan province, China. It borders Xingyi, Guizhou to the east, Xilin County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to the southeast, Shizong County to the southwest, and Luliang County, Qi ...

Yunnan Province Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

, southwestern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. It is known from the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

LPV-10144, which consists of nearly complete

skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of most animals. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is a rigid outer shell that holds up an organism's shape; the endoskeleton, a rigid internal fra ...

and

skull The skull, or cranium, is typically a bony enclosure around the brain of a vertebrate. In some fish, and amphibians, the skull is of cartilage. The skull is at the head end of the vertebrate. In the human, the skull comprises two prominent ...

, from the

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype (biology), isotype ...

LPV-10120, a partial skull and from the referred materials LPV-10625, LPV-6868 and LPV-11817. Fossils were found in the new Middle Triassic

Lagerstätte A Fossil-Lagerstätte (, from ''Lager'' 'storage, lair' '' Stätte'' 'place'; plural ''Lagerstätten'') is a sedimentary deposit that preserves an exceptionally high amount of palaeontological information. ''Konzentrat-Lagerstätten'' preserv ...

of the

Guanling Formation The Guanling Formation is a Middle Triassic (Anisian or Pelsonian in the regional chronostratigraphy) geologic Formation (geology), formation in southwestern China. Geology The formation encompasses two members. The first member is primarily c ...

, Member II.

Etymology

It was first named by Wen Wen, Qi-Yue Zhang, Chang-Yong Zhou, Jin-Yuan Huang, Zhong Qiang Chen and Michael J. Benton in

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

and the type species is ''Luoxiongichthys hyperdorsalis''. The generic name is derived from ''Luoxiong'' Town, where the specimens were found and ''ichthys'', "fish" from

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

comes from ''hyper'', "over" and ''dorsalis'', "of the back" from Greek in reference to its elevated "hump" in front of the

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates. Dorsal fins have evolved independently several times through convergent evolution adapting to marine environments, so the fins are not all homologous. They are found ...

Phylogeny

Cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

after Wen ''et al.'', 2011:

References

Prehistoric ray-finned fish genera Triassic bony fish Fossil taxa described in 2011 Triassic fish of Asia Anisian life Guanling Formation {{Triassic-fish-stub