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Bonnerichthys

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Through Fossil

Feeding

One of the most significant features of Bonnerichthys is the recognition that it was a filter feeder, living on plankton. This recognition that many large-bodied fish from the Mesozoic in the Pachycormidae were filter feeders shows that this niche was filled for at least 100 million years before previously known. The modern niche is filled by several species of sharks and the baleen whales.

The international team that described the genus named it after the Marion Charles Bonner fossil hunting family, whose collections from the Niobrara Cretaceous chalk of western Kansas are in many museums and research institutions.

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