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Description
Scientific name: Osteoacutus wilsonii

Common name: Hookfish

The hookfish was found in a large marsh that most of the savannah’s few rivers feed into. Among its more interesting features are the fins, jaws and claws.

The fins are made up of membranes stretched across modified auditory spines, giving them a somewhat more fish-like appearance than the beaked fish-whale. As the hookfish anatomy is more derived than the previously found aquatic organisms, it seems likely that it and its close relatives are an offshoot of the ichthyocetus.

The hookfish doesn’t have teeth. Instead, it has dunkleosteus style boney shearing plates. They continually grow and are continually raked across each other each time the animal closes its mouth, keeping them sharp and in prime cutting condition.

The limbs of the hookfish are derived from the flippers of the more primitive ichthyocetaceans. The claws have a significant, almost fully circular curve. Observations have revealed them to be multi-purpose tools, though they are not used to take down prey, as one might expect. In the adults, they are used to collect up scraps of food for consumption after the initial kill. Whether this is a year-round behavior has yet to be seen, as it was only recently mating season, and they may simply do this to provide food for their young, a behavior which has been observed many times since their discovery. During mating behavior, the claws are used as claspers. There is a membrane which stretches between the upper sections of the arm. This is to reduce the drag created by carrying around ragged scraps of food, and also serves as a shelter for the young, who use their claws to latch onto the adults and thus stay relatively safe, as this is the apex predator in the marsh.

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So like I said on my last illustration, I figured that the auditory spines could be modified into fin supports resemblimg what we've got in ray-finned fish here on Earth. That leaves alot of potential for the modification of the remaining true limbs. This is one of the outcomes I came up with.

Description
Scientific name: Osteoacutus wilsonii

Common name: Hookfish

The hookfish was found in a large marsh that most of the savannah’s few rivers feed into. Among its more interesting features are the fins, jaws and claws.

The fins are made up of membranes stretched across modified auditory spines, giving them a somewhat more fish-like appearance than the beaked fish-whale. As the hookfish anatomy is more derived than the previously found aquatic organisms, it seems likely that it and its close relatives are an offshoot of the ichthyocetus.

The hookfish doesn’t have teeth. Instead, it has dunkleosteus style boney shearing plates. They continually grow and are continually raked across each other each time the animal closes its mouth, keeping them sharp and in prime cutting condition.

The limbs of the hookfish are derived from the flippers of the more primitive ichthyocetaceans. The claws have a significant, almost fully circular curve. Observations have revealed them to be multi-purpose tools, though they are not used to take down prey, as one might expect. In the adults, they are used to collect up scraps of food for consumption after the initial kill. Whether this is a year-round behavior has yet to be seen, as it was only recently mating season, and they may simply do this to provide food for their young, a behavior which has been observed many times since their discovery. During mating behavior, the claws are used as claspers. There is a membrane which stretches between the upper sections of the arm. This is to reduce the drag created by carrying around ragged scraps of food, and also serves as a shelter for the young, who use their claws to latch onto the adults and thus stay relatively safe, as this is the apex predator in the marsh.

-------------------------------------------
So like I said on my last illustration, I figured that the auditory spines could be modified into fin supports resemblimg what we've got in ray-finned fish here on Earth. That leaves alot of potential for the modification of the remaining true limbs. This is one of the outcomes I came up with.