Canowindra grossi.

Pronunciation: Ca-noun-dra gros-si
Translation: "Gross's Canowindra" - named after the type locality and Professor Walter Gross, who spent his career studying lobe-finned fishes.
Period: Late Devonian (360 million years ago)

Description: Small carnivorous lobe-finned fish

Class - Osteichthyes ('bony fish')
Subclass - Sarcopterygii ('fleshy-fins')
Superorder - Crossopterygii (lobe-finned fishes)
Order - Osteolepiformes ('bony scaled forms')
Family - Canowindridae (Canowindra fishes)
Genus - Canowindra
Species - Canowindra grossi

Length - 50 cm

Discovered at Canowindra, NSW in 1956. The only known specimen lies in the middle of a large sandstone slab and is surrounded by more than 100 smaller placoderm fishes. The specimen was studied and named by Professor Keith Thomson in 1976. Canowindra grossi is distantly related to some lobe-finned fishes known from the Northern Hemisphere, but is different enough to be placed in its own family. Its closest relatives are fossil fishes found in Victoria and Antarctica. Since 1956 more than 3,000 additional fish specimens have been recovered from the Canowindra site, but no additional specimens of Canowindra grossi have been found.

As with most other osteolepiforms, the head is 'reptilian' in appearance. The scales are reinforced with bone, and Canowindra grossi was able to breathe air using a lung or lungs; the air was drawn in through a fully developed nasal system. This complemented the gill system, allowing the fish to take up oxygen from the air or the water - this feature regularly occurs in fishes living in tropical fresh water systems. The air in the lung/s would have helped Canowindra to control its buoyancy in the water.