Late

Lavoué, Sébastien, 2020, REVIEW Origins of Afrotropical freshwater fishes, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 188, pp. 345-411 : 349

Middle to Late Cretaceous

The continental (freshwater and brackish) middle Cretaceous (i.e. Cenomanian, 100.5–93.9 Mya) fish assemblages from north Africa (specifically, from Morocco and Egypt) are relatively well studied ( Cavin et al., 2010, 2015), and they consistently reveal the presence of several groups of non-teleost fishes. These include the sarcopterygian dipnoi (i.e. lungfish of the Ceratodontidae and Neoceratodontidae , with both families now extinct in Africa) and actinistian (i.e. coelacanths of the Mawsoniidae , extinct), the non-teleost actinopterygian Cladistia ( Polypteridae ), Holostei Amiiformes (including the Amiidae ; extinct in Africa and with only one extant species of Amia calva Linnaeus, 1766 restricted to North America) and Holostei Semionotiformes– Lepisosteiformes [including freshwater Lepisosteidae ; extinct in Africa, and with only a few extant species restricted to North and Central America, Nearctic ( Cavin et al., 2010; Grande, 2010)], and teleost Ichthyodectiformes (extinct), Tselfatiiformes (extinct), Notopteroidei (with † Palaeonotopterus greenwoodi Forey, 1997 ) and some undetermined characiform remains along with some possible remains of Siluriformes . This fauna shows strong affinities with that of South America at that time ( Cavin et al., 2010, 2015).