Dipnorhynchus
Encyclopedia
Dipnorhynchus is an extinct genus of lungfish
Lungfish
Lungfish are freshwater fish belonging to the Subclass Dipnoi. Lungfish are best known for retaining characteristics primitive within the Osteichthyes, including the ability to breathe air, and structures primitive within Sarcopterygii, including the presence of lobed fins with a well-developed...

 from the middle Devonian
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...

 period of Australia and Europe.

Dipnorhynchus was a primitive lungfish, but still it had features that set it apart from other sarcopterygians. Its skull
Skull
The skull is a bony structure in the head of many animals that supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.The skull is composed of two parts: the cranium and the mandible. A skull without a mandible is only a cranium. Animals that have skulls are called craniates...

 lacked the joint that divided the skull in two in rhipidists
Rhipidistia
The Rhipidistia were lobe-finned fishes that are the ancestors of the tetrapods. Taxonomists traditionally considered the Rhipidistia a subgroup of Crossopterygii that described a group of fish that lived during the Devonian consisting of the Porolepiformes and Osteolepiformes...

 and coelacanth
Coelacanth
Coelacanths are members of an order of fish that includes the oldest living lineage of Sarcopterygii known to date....

s. Instead, it was a solid bony
Bone
Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...

 structure similar to that of the first tetrapod
Tetrapod
Tetrapods are vertebrate animals having four limbs. Amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are all tetrapods; even snakes and other limbless reptiles and amphibians are tetrapods by descent. The earliest tetrapods evolved from the lobe-finned fishes in the Devonian...

s. Instead of cheek teeth, Dipnorhynchus had tooth-like plates on the palate
Palate
The palate is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but, in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separate. The palate is divided into two parts, the anterior...

 and lower jaw. Also like land vertebrates, the palate was fused with the brain case. It was relatively large for a lungfish, measuring 90 centimetres (3 ft) in length.

It appeared along with other Devonian fish in the 2008 Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki
is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...

 film Ponyo.
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