''Melvius'' is a
genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...
of
vidalamiin amiid 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% ...
from the
Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger 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 ''creta'', ...
. The type species, ''Melvius thomasi'', was described by Bryant in 1987. A second species ''Melvius chauliodous'', was named and described by Hall and Wolburg in 1989,
[L. Grande and W. E. Bemis. 1998. A comprehensive phylogenetic study of amiid fishes (Amiidae) based on comparative skeletal anatomy. An empirical search for interconnected patterns of natural history. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir 4. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 18(1, suppl.):1-690 ] and it is now considered to be one of the index taxa of the
Kirtlandian land-vertebrate age.
References
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