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Description
Now on the second day of Fossil Fish Week, I am still drawing obscure fossil fish that should really be getting more attention. Cutiesaurs asked on the Birgeria drawing I posted yesterday if I could draw the sabertooth salmon. Well I think this answers your question.

While fossil fish from the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras are quite well known and get some attention, Cenozoic bony fish, on the other hand, are quite overlooked but there are still quite some notable Cenozoic fishes. One of these is Oncorhynchus rastrosus, commonly known as the sabertooth salmon. Just looking at it, it should be easy to tell why it has this common name. The sabertooth salmon’s remains are known from California, USA and it lived from the late Miocene to the early Pliocene, 12 to 5 million years ago. O. rastrosus belongs in the same genus as extant Pacific salmon and Pacific trout, but originally it was placed in its own genus Smilodonichthys, now deemed a synonym of Oncorhynchus. Extant salmon are large fish, with smaller species having a maximum length of around 80 centimetres and the largest (the Atlantic salmon) growing upto 1.5 meters long, but O. rastrosus was large even by salmon standards and reached up to 2.7 meters in length. Despite its fangs, this fish has very few other teeth and large gill rakers which suggests it was a filter feeder that ate plankton, unlike most extant salmon which prey on small fish. Like extant salmon, the sabertooth is believed to be anadromous, being born in fresh water but swimming out to sea where they spend most of their adult lives until the time comes for them to breed, which is when they swim back up river to mate. The fangs that earned the fish its name are believed to have been used by males to compete for mates as teeth found in freshwater deposits (where they breed) have larger bases and are more worn down than those found in saltwater deposits, suggesting they were used more during breeding time. Due to this I have here portrayed the fangs as a male-exclusive trait, not being present in the females (but this is just speculation and possibly both genders had them). Despite all this cool stuff, O. rastrosus remains quite obscure and overlooked, although the survival game ARK: Survival Evolved did include a fish called the sabertooth salmon (ARK’s salmon, however, is NOT O. rastrosus, and the dossier page for the animal shows that it is the fictional species O. grexlamia).

This artwork shows a scene at a river in California where sabertooth salmon breed, 5 million years ago during the early Pliocene. A long journey from the oceans to reach this river has proven too exhausting for some of the salmon, including a female pregnant with unfertilised eggs that has died and washed ashore. The massive dead fish attracts scavengers quickly. Flocks of Larus oregonus, an extinct species of seagull, have come to scavenge, but bigger animals are also arriving. A pair of Borophagus littoralis, an extinct species of dog with bone-crushing jaws, has also decided to opportunistically feed on the dead fish and take a break from their normal mammalian prey. The dogs are the size of coyotes, being around a meter long, but are more robust, and soon tear into the salmon. As they do, they expose the unfertilised eggs of the fish, many of which spill out into the river. In the water, a male sabertooth salmon notices this as a chance to reproduce. Having failed to compete with other males for mates, this may be the only chance to breed it will get and it ejaculates clouds of sperm into the water to fertilise the eggs.

I know, this is kinda fucked up and sort of necrophilia since the female is dead. I was a bit inspired from a behaviour known from Rhinella proboscidea, an extant toad in which the males are known to squeeze unfertilised eggs out of dead females and then fertilise them. This is the only animal known to engage in necrophilia and successfully reproduce through it, and I’m wondering whether a desperate male salmon might perhaps do something similar. Extant salmon engage in external fertilisation, so the sabertooth most likely did too and if so this could work for it, even if it is kinda messed up. Well, happy late messed-up Valentines Day for you, Mr Fish.

Also, first Larus oregonus on DA!

Description
Now on the second day of Fossil Fish Week, I am still drawing obscure fossil fish that should really be getting more attention. Cutiesaurs asked on the Birgeria drawing I posted yesterday if I could draw the sabertooth salmon. Well I think this answers your question.

While fossil fish from the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras are quite well known and get some attention, Cenozoic bony fish, on the other hand, are quite overlooked but there are still quite some notable Cenozoic fishes. One of these is Oncorhynchus rastrosus, commonly known as the sabertooth salmon. Just looking at it, it should be easy to tell why it has this common name. The sabertooth salmon’s remains are known from California, USA and it lived from the late Miocene to the early Pliocene, 12 to 5 million years ago. O. rastrosus belongs in the same genus as extant Pacific salmon and Pacific trout, but originally it was placed in its own genus Smilodonichthys, now deemed a synonym of Oncorhynchus. Extant salmon are large fish, with smaller species having a maximum length of around 80 centimetres and the largest (the Atlantic salmon) growing upto 1.5 meters long, but O. rastrosus was large even by salmon standards and reached up to 2.7 meters in length. Despite its fangs, this fish has very few other teeth and large gill rakers which suggests it was a filter feeder that ate plankton, unlike most extant salmon which prey on small fish. Like extant salmon, the sabertooth is believed to be anadromous, being born in fresh water but swimming out to sea where they spend most of their adult lives until the time comes for them to breed, which is when they swim back up river to mate. The fangs that earned the fish its name are believed to have been used by males to compete for mates as teeth found in freshwater deposits (where they breed) have larger bases and are more worn down than those found in saltwater deposits, suggesting they were used more during breeding time. Due to this I have here portrayed the fangs as a male-exclusive trait, not being present in the females (but this is just speculation and possibly both genders had them). Despite all this cool stuff, O. rastrosus remains quite obscure and overlooked, although the survival game ARK: Survival Evolved did include a fish called the sabertooth salmon (ARK’s salmon, however, is NOT O. rastrosus, and the dossier page for the animal shows that it is the fictional species O. grexlamia).

This artwork shows a scene at a river in California where sabertooth salmon breed, 5 million years ago during the early Pliocene. A long journey from the oceans to reach this river has proven too exhausting for some of the salmon, including a female pregnant with unfertilised eggs that has died and washed ashore. The massive dead fish attracts scavengers quickly. Flocks of Larus oregonus, an extinct species of seagull, have come to scavenge, but bigger animals are also arriving. A pair of Borophagus littoralis, an extinct species of dog with bone-crushing jaws, has also decided to opportunistically feed on the dead fish and take a break from their normal mammalian prey. The dogs are the size of coyotes, being around a meter long, but are more robust, and soon tear into the salmon. As they do, they expose the unfertilised eggs of the fish, many of which spill out into the river. In the water, a male sabertooth salmon notices this as a chance to reproduce. Having failed to compete with other males for mates, this may be the only chance to breed it will get and it ejaculates clouds of sperm into the water to fertilise the eggs.

I know, this is kinda fucked up and sort of necrophilia since the female is dead. I was a bit inspired from a behaviour known from Rhinella proboscidea, an extant toad in which the males are known to squeeze unfertilised eggs out of dead females and then fertilise them. This is the only animal known to engage in necrophilia and successfully reproduce through it, and I’m wondering whether a desperate male salmon might perhaps do something similar. Extant salmon engage in external fertilisation, so the sabertooth most likely did too and if so this could work for it, even if it is kinda messed up. Well, happy late messed-up Valentines Day for you, Mr Fish.

Also, first Larus oregonus on DA!