Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin (ISSN 0178 – 6288) . Number 107, November 2013, pp. 30-38. | страница 2

31 teeth, dermal skull elements, scales and fin components obviously have systematic significance. If we are concerned with extinct animals, we can compare directly only structure in attempting to infer relationships}." The corollaries we infer are: 1) If there are no differences, it is likely we are dealing with an identity, or at best a similarity of incertae sedes... 2) Furthermore, if Latimeria appears in the 20th century off the east African coast after a 70 Ma absence, it had to have been somewhere. Intervening coelacanthid specimens in Africa are found in Madagascar's Trias (Moore 1995), Niger's E. Cretaceous (Wenz 1975) and the Negev Miocene. The North African sites were bound by the Tethys Ocean; both also sheltered Lates (Gayet et al.1983; N.F. Goldsmith et a1.1982). But the major transport mechanism, as geophysicists Molnar, Royer, and Dyment agree, was by the northward bound India Plate and the opening of the Red Sea at Aden (Goldsmith and Yanai-Inbar 1997). Further tests compare Negev fossils with teeth and bones in the first Latimeria dissection (Millot, Anthony 1958) and teeth of preserved Latimeria at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, and the Museums of Natural History in Stockholm, Washington, New York, London and Paris (Goldsmith and Yanai-Inbar 1997). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses replicate the results of Boyde (1972), Meinke (1982), and Smith (1978); the bone shows sensory canals as demonstrated by Wenz (1975). Q.E.D. (Goldsmith and Yanai-Inbar 1997). Genus Macropomoides Woodward 1942 The body is relatively deep and reaches about 300 mm SL. The head bones are without ornament; a preorbital is absent; the lachrymojugal is narrow beneath the eye and barely larger than the enclosed sensory canal; postorbital is deep, expanded dorsally with a narrow ventral limb; the squamosal is very small and both the spiracular and the preoperculum may be absent. The premaxilla carries a few stout teeth. The operculum is rounded poster-odorsally with a very oblique ventral margin. Sensory canals open by a few large pores on the parietonasal shield; the angular and splenial each have four large sensory pores. Teeth upon the parasphenoid are restricted to the anterior third of the bone. The principal coronoid has a distinct waist and a longitudinally expanded head. The gular plates are twice as long as broad. The anocleithrum is forked dorsally with a narrow dorsal limb and a broad anterodorsal limb. Short ribs are developed throughout the posterior half of the abdominal region. The caudal fin has a rounded posterior margin which encloses the supplementary lobe. Pointed denticles are present on at least the first three rays of D1 and the leading rays of the principal caudal lobes. The pelvic bone is a simple rod with a proximal lateral Gazelle : The Palestinian Biological Bulletin – Number 107 – November 2013