User blog:Meghunter99/Everybody loves iniopterygians

Or maybe you don't. Iniopterygiformes were sharks, that strikingly, looked little like sharks than flying fish. I find them fascinating for several reasons. They are particularly well preserved in the Carboniferous lagerst&auml;tten of the Bear Gulch Beds. Paleoichthyologist (could there be a better job?) Richard Lund has worked on these sharks, along with countless other varieties since the 1960s, and their variety is astounding. For lack of a better description, here's the FW article on them:

"These fish had several unusual features: massive skulls with huge eye sockets, shark-like teeth in rows, tails with clubs, enormous pectoral fins that were dorsalized or placed almost on their backs, and bone-like spikes or hooks on the tips of their fins."

How they arose is a different story. Besides Bear Gulch, iniopterygians are poorly represented in the fossil record, with their fossils being (mostly?) in the United States (Montana, Indiana, Illinois, and Nebraska). So, with little else to say on them, they are one of my favorite types of sharks, with my favorite being the cretoxyrhinids, and more particularly, Cretoxyrhina (hint: that's the next post :P).

Shark week continues soon!