And Now There Are Three of the Mouthy Muppet Fish Rhinconichthys

Summary: The mouthy muppet fish Rhinconichthys is three species strong now that a second skull in Japan and a third in Colorado join the first discovered in England.

illustration of Rhinconichthys genus by natural history artist Robert Nicholls/paleocreations.com, who describes his subject as: “This is one of the strangest fish I have ever painted!”: Robert Nicholls image, Usage with credit, via EurekAlert!

A three-member team announced the discovery and the examination of a third skull of the mouthy muppet fish Rhinconichthys in an article published online in the journal Cretaceous Research Jan. 28, 2016.

The co-researchers in Colorado, Illinois and Scotland brought to public attention a big-mouthed, bony, Cretaceous, large-eyed, 92-million-year-old, toothless, 2.0- to 2.7-meter- (6.56- to 8.86-foot-) long fish. Anthony Maltese of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park commented after curating Rhinconichthys for display: “It is basically a 3-D hard water stain.” He described an “underbite so severe it looked like it couldn’t close its jaws” from the lower jaw protruding so much further than the upper jaw. He explained that buccal similarities to the Muppet Bleaker inspired the nickname for the mouthy muppet fish Rhinconichthys.

Filter-feeding mechanisms for plankton-eaters fit the mouthy muppet fish Rhinconichthys into a genus meaning “like (the whale shark) Rhincodon," suspension-feeder like blue whales and manta rays. Fossilization in dry washes in southeastern Colorado’s Comanche National Grasslands near Las Animas County’s Purgatoire river generates the species for the mouthy muppet fish Rhinconichthys purgatoirensis. Bruce Schumacher of Colorado’s Denver Museum of Nature and Science and United States Forest Service in La Junta had the honor of discovery in September 2012. He indicated that “It doesn’t have a wow factor like T-Rex” to discover fin rays after cracking open an unusually bulging rock wall with a hammer. He judged after 150-hour extrications that “What it lacks, it has to the nth degree in terms of scientific significance.”

Kenshu Shimada of Illinois’s DePaul University in Chicago and Kansas’s Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Fort Hays knew of Rhinconichthys taylori’s prior discovery in England. He labeled newly discovered species “really mindboggling” since “we had no idea back then [in 2010] that the genus was so diverse and so globally distributed.” He mentioned Rhinconichthys proliferating as purgatoirensis in Colorado, as taylori in England and as uyenoi in Japan’s Upper Cretaceous Mikasa Formation of Hokkaido’s Middle Yezo Group. He noted with his co-authors the extensive “geographic and stratigraphic range” of the mouthy muppet fish Rhinconichthys in England’s and Japan’s Cenomanian age and Colorado’s Turonian. He observed that “This tells just how little we still know about the biodiversity of organisms through the Earth’s history.”

Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center provides a home for the  mouthy muppet fish Rhinconichthys in a hall for huge-toothed, predatory sea creatures with gaping jaws.

The condition of the fossil and the preparation for permanent display qualified the skull for casts to be made for research use anywhere in the world. The calculation of body shape and size from the preserved gill basket, partial skull and pectoral rays resulted in an artistic reconstruction by paleo-artist Gary Ranam.

The casts, the fossil and the illustration show the “highly unusual specialization” of lower jawbones levering jaws into protruding and swinging down, sideways, up like parachutes.

A lack of table manners in fast and furious filter-feeding takes the mouthy muppet fish Rhinconichthys far in dinosaur-dominated worlds.

A pair of oar-shaped bones called hyomandibulae caused Rhinconichthys jaws to protrude and open extra wide for increased flow of plankton-rich water in the mouth: Kenshu Shimada illustration, Usage with credit, via EurekAlert!

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

illustration of Rhinconichthys genus by natural history artist Robert Nicholls/paleocreations.com, who describes his subject as: “This is one of the strangest fish I have ever painted!”: Robert Nicholls image, Usage with credit, via EurekAlert! @ https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/537911; (EurekAlert! news release @ https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/473846); (former URL @ http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/108554.php?from=318584)

A pair of oar-shaped bones called hyomandibulae caused Rhinconichthys jaws to protrude and open extra wide for increased flow of plankton-rich water in the mouth: Kenshu Shimada illustration, Usage with credit, via EurekAlert! @ https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/537910; (EurekAlert! news release @ https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/473846); (former URL @ https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/108555.php?from=318584)

For further information:

The Denver Post @DenverPost. 11 February 2016. "Fossil of 92 million year old fish, 1 of 3 now known in the world, will come to Denver." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/denverpost/status/697955861075873793

“Fossil Discovery: Extraordinary ‘Big-Mouth’ Fish from Cretaceous Period.” DePaul University > News Releases > Feb. 8, 2016.
Available @ http://newsroom.depaul.edu/NewsReleases/showNews.aspx?NID=2984

“Gary Raham.” Biostration.
Available @ http://biostration.com/index.html

GeoBeats News. 10 February 2016. “Species Of Fish With Muppet-Like Mouths Found." YouTube.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3qxC_V3dfg

McGhee, Tom. 10 February 2016. “Fossil of 92 Million-Year-Old Fish Will Come to Denver.” The Denver Post > Denver and the West.
Available @ http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29506103/fossil-92-million-year-old-fish-will-come

Pascual, Katrina. 9 February 2016. “Ancient Fish Rhinconichthys Used Big Mouth to Swallow Planktons in Cretaceous Period Oceans.” Tech Times > Science > Earth.
Available @ http://www.techtimes.com/articles/131855/20160209/ancient-fish-rhinconichthys-used-big-mouth-to-swallow-planktons-in-cretaceous-period-oceans.htm

Prigg, Mark. 8 February 2016. “The Megamouth Fish: Giant ‘Oar-Like’ Mouth of Rhinconichthys Allowed It to Scoop up Vast Quantities of Plankton.” Daily Mail > Science Tech.
Available @ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3438146/The-megamouth-fish-Giant-oar-like-mouth-Rhinconichthys-allowed-scoop-vast-quantities-plankton.html

Schumacher, Bruce A.; Shimada, Kenshu; Liston, Jeff; and Maltese, Anthony. June 2016. Available online 28 January 2016. “Highly Specialized Suspension-Feeding Bony Fish Rhinconichthys (Actinopterygii: Pachycormiformes) from the Mid-Cretaceous of the United States, England, and Japan.” Cretaceous Research 61: 71–85. DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2015.12.017
Available @ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195667115301427
Available @ http://www.academia.edu/22897823/Highly_specialized_suspension-feeding_bony_fish_Rhinconichthys_Actinopterygii_Pachycormiformes_from_the_mid-Cretaceous_of_the_United_States_England_and_Japan

Taylor, Melissa. 10 February 2016. “Two New Cretaceous ‘Big Mouth’ Fish Fossils Spotted.” Modern Readers > Life.
Available @ http://www.modernreaders.com/cretaceous-fish/39622/melissa-taylor