Hippocampus

Name meaning:

Sea horse

Period of life:

13 million years ago

Period:

Neogene period

Habitat:

Marine environment

Taxonomy:

Bony fish

Countries:

Neogene period Hippocampus | 3D Dinopedia

Phorusrhacos

Coelodonta

Hippocampus (13 million years ago)

What does the name mean: meaning “seahorse,” literally “horse” (ἵππος) and “sea monster” (κάμπος). The fish was given this name because it resembles the chess piece known as the “knight.” The name also refers to Ancient Greek mythology and the mysterious sea monster “hippocampus,” with which the fish also shares similarities.

About 13 million years ago, during the Miocene Epoch, unusual fishes swam through the warm shallow waters of the ancient Paratethys Sea, which stretched across the territory of modern Europe. Among them were the earliest known ancestors of modern seahorses. Two such “venerable” representatives, Hippocampus slovenicus and Hippocampus sarmaticus, were discovered in 2005 within the coprolite horizon of the Tunice Lagerstätte hills in Slovenia. These fossils represent the oldest known remains of seahorses.

These prehistoric seahorses were small — Hippocampus sarmaticus did not exceed 9 centimeters in length, while Hippocampus slovenicus was truly tiny, measuring no more than 1.5 centimeters. Like their modern relatives, their bodies resembled the chess piece of a knight — with a curved neck, an elongated snout accounting for about half the total length of the head, and a prehensile tail with 11 trunk rings. This tail was one and a half times longer than the body and contained 25–26 caudal rings, while the base of the dorsal fin was exceptionally long.

This prehistoric seahorse preferred calm lagoons and seagrass meadows. It was a very poor swimmer (modern seahorses swim no more than about 1.5 meters per hour), so it clung to algae with its tail while slowly moving in search of food. Like its modern relatives, this distant ancestor of seahorses fed on small crustaceans, which it skillfully sucked in with its tubular snout. Fossils of this ancient marine inhabitant allow us to glimpse the distant past and imagine what the ancestors of modern seahorses looked like and what kind of lifestyle they led.

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