Percomorpha are the most diverse group of teleost fish today. Teleosts, and percomorphs in particular, thrived during the Cenozoic era. Fossil evidence shows that there was a major increase in size and abundance of teleosts immediately after the mass extinction event at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary ca. 66 Ma ago.[7] The oldest known percomorph fossils are of the early tetraodontiformsProtriacanthus and Cretatriacanthidae from the Santonian to Campanian of Italy and Slovenia.[8] A higher diversity of early percomorphs is also known from the Campanian of Nardò, Italy, and these also show some level of diversification into modern orders, with representatives of the Syngnathiformes and Tetraodontiformes known.[9] Possibly the oldest percomorph is Plectocretacicus from the Cenomanian of Lebanon, which may be a stem-tetraodontiform; however, some morphological analyses indicate that it shows similarities with non-percomorph groups.[8][10]
Phylogeny
External relationships
The two cladograms below are based on Betancur-R et al., 2017.[5] Percomorphs are a clade of teleost fishes. The first cladogram shows the interrelationships of percomorphs with other living groups of teleosts.
^Harvey, Virginia L.; Keating, Joseph N.; Buckley, Michael (August 2021). "Phylogenetic analyses of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) using collagen type I protein sequences". Royal Society Open Science. 8 (8): 201955. Bibcode:2021RSOS....801955H. doi:10.1098/rsos.201955. PMC 8355665. PMID 34430038.
^Thomas J. Near; et al. (2012). "Resolution of ray-finned fish phylogeny and timing of diversification". PNAS. 109 (34): 13698–13703. Bibcode:2012PNAS..10913698N. doi:10.1073/pnas.1206625109. PMC 3427055. PMID 22869754.
^Betancur-R, Ricardo; et al. (2013). "The Tree of Life and a New Classification of Bony Fishes". PLOS Currents Tree of Life. 5 (Edition 1). doi:10.1371/currents.tol.53ba26640df0ccaee75bb165c8c26288. hdl:2027.42/150563. PMC 3644299. PMID 23653398.
^Laurin, M.; Reisz, R.R. (1995). "A reevaluation of early amniote phylogeny". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 113 (2): 165–223. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.1995.tb00932.x.
^Nelson, Joseph S.; Grande, Terry C.; Wilson, Mark V. H. (2016). Fishes of the World (5th ed.). Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons. pp. 314–526. doi:10.1002/9781119174844. ISBN 978-1-118-34233-6. Archived from the original on 2019-04-08. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
^Sibert, E. C.; Norris, R. D. (2015-06-29). "New Age of Fishes initiated by the Cretaceous−Paleogene mass extinction". PNAS. 112 (28): 8537–8542. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.8537S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1504985112. PMC 4507219. PMID 26124114.
^ a bArcila, Dahiana; Alexander Pyron, R.; Tyler, James C.; Ortí, Guillermo; Betancur-R., Ricardo (2015-01-01). "An evaluation of fossil tip-dating versus node-age calibrations in tetraodontiform fishes (Teleostei: Percomorphaceae)". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 82: 131–145. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2014.10.011. ISSN 1055-7903. PMID 25462998.
^Friedman, Matt; V. Andrews, James; Saad, Hadeel; El-Sayed, Sanaa (2023-06-16). "The Cretaceous–Paleogene transition in spiny-rayed fishes: surveying "Patterson's Gap" in the acanthomorph skeletal record André Dumont medalist lecture 2018". Geologica Belgica. doi:10.20341/gb.2023.002. ISSN 1374-8505.
^Carnevale, Giorgio; Johnson, G. David (2015). "A Cretaceous Cusk-Eel (Teleostei, Ophidiiformes) from Italy and the Mesozoic Diversification of Percomorph Fishes". Copeia. 103 (4): 771–791. doi:10.1643/CI-15-236. ISSN 0045-8511.