Morphometric analysis of lungfish endocasts elucidates early dipnoan palaeoneurological evolution.

The lobe-finned fish, lungfish (Dipnoi, Sarcoptergii), have persisted for ~400 million years from the Devonian Period to present day. The evolution of their dermal skull and dentition is relatively well understood, but this is not the case for the central nervous system. While the brain has poor preservation potential and is not currently known in any fossil lungfish, substantial indirect information about it and associated structures (e.

The cranial endocast of the Upper Devonian dipnoan '.

One of the first endocasts of a dipnoan (lungfish) to be realised was that of the Upper Devonian taxon This early interpretation was based on observations of the shape of the cranial cavity alone and was not based on a natural cast or 'steinkern' nor from serial sectioning. The validity of this reconstruction is therefore questionable and continued reference to and use of this interpretation in analyses of sarcopterygian cranial evolution runs the risk of propagation of error. Here we present a new detailed anatomical description of the endocast of ' from the Upper Devonian Gogo Formation of Western Australia, known for exceptional 3D preservation which enables fine-scale scrutiny of endocranial anatomy.

The cranial endocast of (Sarcopterygii: Dipnoi) and the interrelationships of stem-group lungfishes.

The first virtual cranial endocast of a lungfish from the Early Devonian, , is described. only the fourth Devonian lungfish for which a near complete cranial endocast is known, is a key taxon for clarifying primitive character states within the group. A ventrally-expanded telencephalic cavity is present in the endocast of demonstrating that this is the primitive state for "true" Dipnoi.