Herreraichthys
genus of fishes
Herreraichthys is an extinct genus of gar from the Late Cretaceous of Mexico. It contains a single species, H. coahuilaensis. The genus name honors the famous Mexican scientist Alfonso L. Herrera.
It is known from Santonian-aged sediments from the "Los Temporales" quarry in Coahuila. It is a long-snouted fish that appears to be more closely related to extant gar (Atractosteus and Lepisosteus) than to other fossil gar, and it is thus placed in the same tribe (Lepisosteini) as extant gar. Its occurrence in marine strata suggests that it may have been a fully marine species, similar to what is thought of ancestral gars and in contrast to extant gar, which are found in freshwater habitats. However, it is also possible that as with the modern alligator gar, it could temporarily survive in the sea.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 19, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q21347414. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Herreraichthys” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.