A new early Cretaceous clupeomorph fish from the Arratia Valley, Basque Country, Spain

Fish-bearing beds of early Cretaceous age crop out in the Arratia Valley, p rovince of Biscay, along the nucleus of the Bilbao Anticlinorium in the Bas que-Cantabrian Basin, northern Spain. Teleost fossils have been found in se veral stratigraphic levels, dated as Valanginian-Barremian, in the Villaro Member of the Villaro Formation. The Villaro Member is a 1100-m-thick succe ssion of black shales, sandstones and scattered limestones that represent d eposition in a shallow lacustrine system periodically fed by delta progradi ng bars and channels. Deposition took place in a restricted freshwater-brac kish environment that was occasionally affected by marine incursions. The f irst new taxon from the Arratia Valley, described here, is Ezkutuberezi car meni gen. nov., sp. nov., a deep-bodied clupeomorph whose autapomorphies in clude: a posterior supramaxilla with a long anterior process forming an ang le of 90 degrees with the main body of the bone; a hypertrophied, claw-shap ed last dorsal scute; only two epurals; and hypural 3 with a submedian long itudinal crest. The morphology of the dorsal scutes supports its assignment to the paraclupeid subfamily Paraclupeinae within the order Ellimmichthyif ormes. The new taxon is the oldest European clupeomorph, and the first arti culated vertebrate fossil to be described from the Basque-Cantabrian Basin. (C) 2000 Academic Press.