''Melvius'' is a

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 vidalamiin amiid

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 ...

from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

. The type species, ''Melvius thomasi'', was described by Bryant in 1987 from

Hell Creek Formation The Hell Creek Formation is an intensively studied division of mostly Upper Cretaceous and some lower Paleocene rocks in North America, named for exposures studied along Hell Creek, near Jordan, Montana. The Formation (stratigraphy), formation s ...

.L. J. Bryant. 1987. A new genus and species of Amiidae (Holostei; Osteichthyes) from the Late Cretaceous of North America, with comments on the phylogeny of the Amiidae. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 7(4):349-361 A second species ''Melvius chauliodous'', was named and described by Hall and Wolburg in 1989 from

Kirtland Formation The Kirtland Formation (originally the Kirtland Shale) is a Sedimentary rock, sedimentary geological formation. Description The Kirtland Formation is the product of alluvial muds and overbank sand deposits from the many channels draining the ...

, and it is now considered to be one of the index taxa of the Kirtlandian land-vertebrate age.

Description

Both species of ''Melvius'' were very large. A vertebral remain of ''M. thomasi'' would have belonged to a fish with standard length (length between tip of snout and the base of the caudal fin) of , and there are some specimens that exceed the height of that vertebra. Total length of this species would be at least . However, ''M. thomasi'' was dwarfed by ''M. chauliodous'', as a specimen of ''M. chauliodous'' with abdominal centra which is wide would indicate a standard length of over , and there is even larger abdominal centra which is wide.

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 Cretaceous fish of North America Cretaceous bony fish Hell Creek fauna Fossil taxa described in 1987 {{Amiiformes-stub