New Species and new 'Family' of Fish

[Allan Edels <edels@msn.com>]

> From CNN:

TEXT FOLLOWS:
========================================================

Researchers identify new species
Catfish found in Mexico has ancient characteristics

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 Posted: 9:18 PM EDT (0118 GMT)


MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican and U.S. researchers said they believe 
an ancient-looking, rarely seen fish in a Mexican river represents a new 
species of catfish -- and an entirely new taxonomic family.

It would be only the third new family of fish found in the last 60 years and 
could offer scientists a view into the distant past, a Mexican scientist 
said Tuesday.

The new species was dubbed Lacantunia enigmatica, of the family 
Lacantuniidae, in an article published in the online scientific journal 
Zootaxa.

The names are derived from the fish's habitat in the Lacantun river of 
southern Chiapas state, a tributary of the Usumacinta river, which marks the 
boundary between Mexico and Guatemala.

"It's unusual to find a new family," said biologist Maria del Rocio Rodiles 
of Mexico's Colegio de la Frontera Sur, who began finding examples of the 
rare fish in the mid- to late 1990s. "It's also unusual to find a new 
species of catfish of this size."

The Lacantunia enigmatica -- "enigmatic" because scientists are not sure of 
its habits or its origins -- is a flat-sided, thick-tailed fish that grows 
to about 1 1/2 feet (1/2 meter) in length.

"This fish has ancestral characteristics. It is not like a modern catfish," 
said Rodiles, who at first was not sure of the significance of the find and 
consulted with researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

"It has characteristics that indicate its ancestors were among the world's 
earliest catfish," Rodiles said.

The University of Texas said in a news statement that anatomical studies 
show that the fish is the only member of an ancient group that may have 
arisen while dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

A rare catch:
The new catfish's whiskers are articulated differently, and there also are 
differences in the bone structure of its skull and in the shape of the air 
bladder.

About 32 of the fish have been found since the 1990s, but they are rare and 
hard to catch. Only one specimen was found in a recent five-day expedition.

Moreover, their habitat is located in and around Montes Azules, a jungle 
reserve endangered by logging, farming and cattle ranching.

Jonathan Armbruster, an associate professor of biology specializing in 
catfish at Auburn University, said the discovery of the new species was 
significant because it could help scientists learn more about the movement 
of continents and people.

"You can almost think of it as a potentially living fossil," he said.

But he cautioned that scientists still had much to learn about the fish's 
range and habitat.

It became the 37th named family of catfishes. In ichthyology there have been 
just two new families discovered in the past 60 years: the coelacanth in 
1938 and the megamouth shark in 1983.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.