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

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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