paleonet New chimaeroid from the Niobrara Chalk

[Mike Everhart <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,
Recently I was sent a three unusual "bones" from the Smoky Hill Chalk 
Mbr, Niobrara Chalk by a private collector. They didn't look like 
anything I'd ever seen before (after eliminating the usual suspects, 
mosasaurs and big marine turtles), so I sent pictures to several 
paleontologists.  Ken Carpenter (Denver Museum) was the first to respond 
that they might be the remains of a chimaeroid, and suggested recent 
papers by Stahl and Parris (2004) and Parmley and Cicimurri (2005). 
Neither David Parris or David Cicimurri were on my initial list 
(chimaeroids had never been found in the chalk, with the exception of a 
dorsal fin spine a long time ago).  They both independently identified 
the remains as those of a chimaeroid, certainly one of the first known 
from the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Sea.

The remains are shown on a new webpage:
http://www.oceansofkansas.com/Chimaeroid.html

and feature a relatively new painting of _Hydrolagus trolli_ by Ray 
Troll (used with permission), a modern ratfish recently discovered  near 
New Caledonia, and named by Dr. Dominque Dagit of the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia.
http://clade.acnatsci.org/dagit/

The specimen is being donated to the Sternberg Museum of Natural History.

Regards,

Mike Everhart
Adjunct Curator of Paleontology
Sternberg Museum of Natural History
Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS
www.oceansofkansas.com