A new stem-tetrapod fish from the Middle-Late Devonian of central Australia

Remote Devonian exposures in central Australia have produced significant but highly fragmentary remains of fish-grade tetrapodomorphs. We describe a new tetrapodomorph from the Middle-Late Devonian (Givetian-Frasnian) Harajica Sandstone Member of the Amadeus Basin, Northern Territory, which is represented by several nearly complete skulls along with much of the body and postcranial skeleton. The new form has a posteriorly broad postparietal shield, broad, triangular extratemporal bones, and a lanceolate parasphenoid. The spiracular openings are particularly large, a character also recorded in elpistostegalians and Gogonasus, demonstrating that these structures, suggestive of spiracular surface air-breathing, appeared independently in widely differing nodes of the stem-tetrapod radiation. A phylogenetic analysis resolves the new form within a cluster of osteolepidid-grade taxa, either as part of a polytomy or as the most basally-branching representative of a clade containing 'osteolepidids,' canowindrids, and megalichthyids.http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:A21E263E-9B2B-4C9B-9B1B-74B53C2CF535