''Bawitius'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

genus of giant

polypterid Bichirs and the reedfish comprise Polypteridae , a family of archaic ray-finned fishes and the only family in the order Polypteriformes .Helfman GS, Collette BB, Facey DE, Bowen BW. 2009. The Diversity of Fishes. West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publ ...

from the Upper Cretaceous (lower

Cenomanian The Cenomanian is, in the ICS' geological timescale, the oldest or earliest age of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or the lowest stage of the Upper Cretaceous Series. An age is a unit of geochronology; it is a unit of time; the stage is a unit in the s ...

) Bahariya Formation of Egypt. The type species is ''B. bartheli'', named as a species of '' Polypterus'' in 1984, and the genus etymology comes from

Bawiti El-Bawiti (Arabic: الباويطي, ''al-Bāwīṭī, from'' ) is a town in the Western desert in Egypt. With 30,000 inhabitants, it is the largest settlement in the Bahariya Oasis. The tombs of ''Qarat Qasr Salim'' hill On a low ridge overl ...

, the principal settlement of the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt. It is known from the holotype TU-B SFB 69 Vb 003 (= Bah 5/12-016): left ectopterygoid scales and some sparse scales.

Morphology

Compared to modern polypterids, ''Bawitius'' was enormous: the ''Bawitius'' holotype ectopterygoid is five times larger than the one of '' Polypterus'' and the scales are unusually large, too: these remains suggest the living animal may have been up to 300 centimeters (9.8 feet) in length. The morphology of ''Bawitius'' is different enough to justify its assignment to a new genus apart from ''Polypterus''. Unique features of the genus are, for example, an anterioposteriorly elongated contact between the

lateral process Lateral is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Healthcare *Lateral (anatomy), an anatomical direction *Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle * Lateral release (surgery), a surgical procedure on the side of a kneecap Phonetics *Lateral con ...

and the maxilla, a high, narrow ectopterygoid and the presence of 14 teeth in the main tooth row. The scales are different, too, apart from size, from those of modern polypterids: they feature a discontinuous ganoine layer, a rectilinear shape, and small articular processes.

Ecological relevance

The existence of drastically different polypterids such as ''Bawitius'' and ''

Serenoichthys ''Serenoichthys'' is an extinct genus of small bichir from the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of southeastern Morocco. The genus is monotypic, the type and only species being ''Serenoichthys kemkemensis''. Only known at first from postcranial skele ...

'' corroborates the existence of a variety of polypterid fishes in the ecosystems of Late Cretaceous of North Africa and Brazil.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q4873780 Polypteridae Prehistoric ray-finned fish genera Cretaceous bony fish Prehistoric fish of Africa Bahariya Formation Fossil taxa described in 2012