Taxonomical and palaeoecological investigations of the chondrichthyan and osteichthyan fish remains from the Middle-Late Triassic deposits of the Villány Hills (Southern Hungary)

Szabó, Márton and Botfalvai, Gábor and Ősi, Attila (2019) Taxonomical and palaeoecological investigations of the chondrichthyan and osteichthyan fish remains from the Middle-Late Triassic deposits of the Villány Hills (Southern Hungary). Geobios, 57. pp. 111-126. ISSN 0016-6995

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Abstract

Two sites in Villány Hills, Hungary have provided rich fish assemblages of the Middle to Late Triassic shallow marine deposits. The collected material came from the probably Ladinian Templomhegy Dolomite Member and from the Carnian Mészhegy Sandstone Formation. The ichthyofauna is composed of both chondrichthyans (Hybodontidae indet., Palaeobates angustissimus, ‘Polyacrodus’ sp., ?Lissodus sp.) and osteichthyans (Gyrolepis sp., Birgeria sp., and further indeterminable actinopteryigans). Despite the large sample size, no remains of neoselachians have been found. The Ladinian Templomhegy Dolomite is dominated by durophagous hybodontiforms (Palaeobates angustissimus, ?Lissodus sp.), but the piscivorous hybodontid and the generalist ‘Polyacrodus’ sp. are missing, while in the fish fauna collected from the Carnian Mészhegy Formation indeterminate piscivorous hybodontids are the most common elements and durophagous forms are much less abundant. The dominance of piscivorous hybodontids in the Carnian Mészhegy Sandstone could be related to the decrease of diversity of marine, fish-eating reptiles (e.g. nothosaurs) globally or to the change of paleoenvironmental conditions. The present study improves our knowledge on the poorly known Triassic vertebrate faunas of the Tisza Megaunit, which formed a segment of the passive Neotethys margin of the European Plate and shows and important example of a potential vertebrate faunal shift during the Middle to Late Triassic.

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