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Abstract Throughout the Silurian and Devonian, cartilaginous fish successively evolved their specialized skeletal and dental characteristics, and increasingly refined their sensory systems. The Late Devonian shark taxon Maghriboselache mohamezanei gen. et sp. n. from the eastern Anti-Atlas of Morocco is known from multiple specimens preserving most of its skeletal features, which in some instances are preserved in three dimensions. Key details of the dentition, jaws, and pectoral skeleton are shared with the iconic genus Cladoselache. Phylogenetic analyses place the family Cladoselachidae as the sister group of symmoriiforms and these groups as sister group of the holocephalans. Further phylogenetic results corroborate that the initial evolutionary radiation of crown chondrichthyans occurred within or before the Late Devonian. Remarkably, this new stem holocephalan is equipped with a wide snout and large laterally separated nasal capsules: the earliest known example of this condition in the chondrichthyan and (perhaps) gnathostome record. This suggests sensory specialization approaching that of extant broad-rostrum elasmobranchs and represents a significant addition to increasingly apparent ecomorphological diversity among early chondrichthyans. ZooBank LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:85F45912-9EBA-4061-B62B-5937180E807A.

The eastern Anti-Atlas is renowned for its highly fossiliferous outcrops of Devonian rocks. Ammonoids occur in rock-forming numbers at many localities in the Tafilalt and Maïder. This study addresses the questions of how many ammonoids are preserved within a standardized area as well as over the whole Tafilalt and Maïder basins, and how these mass occurrences formed. Five samples from the Tafilalt and Maïder were analysed. The ammonoids contained therein were prepared, measured and counted as a base for estimates of the orders of magnitude of the total number of preserved ammonoids and their biomass within the respective Famennian strata in the eastern Anti-Atlas. Two samples were stratigraphically assigned to the lower Famennian, two samples to the middle Famennian and one sample to the upper Famennian. For these samples, estimates for a standardized area of 1 km2 and a layer thickness of 100 mm lie between 19.9×109 and 1.25×1010 ammonoids. The estimated numbers for the whole study area with a retrodeformed size of 15 512.5 km2 and a sediment thickness of 100 mm, ranges from 30.9×1013 to 19.4×1014 ammonoids and a annual accumulation of 15.4×109 to 97.1×109 ammonoid conchs. This corresponds to a annual total palaeo-biomass that ranges from 25 954 t to 47 058 t within the whole study area and from 1.67 t to 3.03 t within an area of 1 km2. Based on these results and size-distribution in the samples, the ecological role of the small and highly abundant, subspherical ammonoids from the early and middle Famennian is discussed and reproductive rates are estimated. With ca. 230 eggs produced by an adult female, cheiloceratids and small maeneceratids from the early Famennian deposits are at the lower end of ammonoid reproductive rates.

Fossil chondrichthyan remains are mostly known from their teeth, scales or fin spines only, whereas their cartilaginous endoskeletons require exceptional preservational conditions to become fossilized. While most cartilaginous remains of Famennian (Late Devonian) chondrichthyans were found in older layers of the eastern Anti-Atlas, such fossils were unknown from the Hangenberg black shale (HBS) and only a few chondrichthyan teeth had been found therein previously. Here, we describe a Meckel’s cartilage from the Hangenberg black shale in Morocco, which is the first fossil cartilage from these strata. Since no teeth or other skeletal elements have been found in articulation, we used elliptical Fourier (EFA), principal component (PCA), and hierarchical cluster (HCA) analyses to morphologically compare it with 41 chondrichthyan taxa of different size and age and to evaluate its possible systematic affiliation. PCA and HCA position the new specimen closest to some acanthodian and elasmobranch jaws. Accordingly, a holocephalan origin was excluded. The jaw shape as well as the presence of a polygonal pattern, typical for tessellated calcified cartilage, suggest a ctenacanth origin and we assigned the new HBS Meckel’s cartilage to the order Ctenacanthiformes with reservations.