Bothriolepis sp.
GRI #606
Bothriolepis was an armored fish found in Devonian sediments throughout much of the world. The head and front portion of the body were covered with bony plates, but the tail end was covered with bare skin. The mouth was located on the flattened underside of the body, and it probably swallowed plant material and other debris from the bottom substrate. Most reports are from freshwater sediments, and rarely in marine rocks (Dineley and Metcalf, 1999).
Their unusual appearance led to them being originally described as turtles or beetles (Dineley and Metcalf, 1999). Some specimens of Bothriolepis have been found with their soft organs preserved due to being filled with different kinds of sediment. This enabled a more thorough study of the inner anatomy of Bothriolepis (Denison, 1941). Of all the various species in this genus, most were around 30 cm in length, but one species reached 170 cm (Downs et al., 2016).
References:
Denison, R.H., (1941) The soft anatomy of Bothriolepis. Journal of Paleontology, pp. 553-561.
Dineley, D.L. and Metcalf, S.J., (1999) Fossil Fishes of Great Britain. Peterborough: Joint Nature Conservation Committee. Ch. 8.
Downs, J.P., Daeschler, E.B., Garcia, V.E. and Shubin, N.H., (2016) A new large-bodied species of Bothriolepis (Antiarchi) from the Upper Devonian of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 36(6), https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2016.1221833.