GEOLOGY OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST an open-access journal of the Utah Geological Association ISSN 2380-7601 Volume 7 2020 © 2020 Utah Geological Association. All rights reserved. For permission to copy and distribute, see the following page or visit the UGA website at www.utahgeology.org for information. Email inquiries to GIW@utahgeology.org. HIGH-QUALITY CASTS OF THE MISSING HOLOTYPE OF PETALODUS OHIOENSIS SAFFORD 1853 (CHONDRICHTHYES, PETALODONTIDAE) AT THE FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND THEIR BEARING ON THE VALIDITY AND PRIORITY OF THE SPECIES Wayne M. Itano and Kenneth Carpenter GEOLOGY OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST an open-access journal of the Utah Geological Association ISSN 2380-7601 Production Cover Design and Desktop Publishing Douglas A. Sprinkel Cover Top: Drawings of (1) the labial (outer) and (2) the lingual (inner) faces of the currently missing holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853. From the original description. Middle: (A) labial and (B) lingual views of a cast of the holotype of P. ohioensis from the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Scale bar = 1 cm. Bottom: Three casts of the holotype of P. ohioensis. Left to right: cast of labial side, three-dimensional cast, cast of lingual side. From the collections of the Field Museum of Natural History. i Become a member of the UGA to help support the work of the Association and receive notices for monthly meetings, annual field conferences, and new publi- cations. Annual membership is $20 and annual student membership is only $5. Visit the UGA website at www.utahgeology.org for information and membership application. The UGA board is elected annually by a voting process through UGA members. However, the UGA is a volunteer-driven organization, and we welcome your voluntary service. 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Foster Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum 435.789.3799 eutretauranosuchus@ gmail.com Editors GEOLOGY OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST an open-access journal of the Utah Geological Association Volume 7 2020 197 ABSTRACT The validity of the chondrichthyan species Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853, has long been in doubt due to the poor quality of the published figures and the unknown whereabouts of the holotype. That situation changed with the discovery of casts of the holotype in the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum of Nat- ural History. The quality of the casts is poor, but sufficient to establish P. ohioensis as a valid species and as a senior synonym of P. alleghaniensis Leidy 1856. Recently, casts of the holotype of much better quality were found in the collections of the Field Museum of Natural History, accompanied by documentation indicat- ing that they were likely obtained directly from Safford by O.P. Hay in 1896. The Field Museum casts clearly show the bands of ridges at the base of the crown on the labial and lingual sides, which are not visible on the Yale Peabody Museum casts. High-quality Casts of the Missing Holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853 (Chondrichthyes, Petalodontidae) at the Field Museum of Natural History and their Bearing on the Validity and Priority of the Species Wayne M. Itano and Kenneth Carpenter Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA Wayne.Itano@aya.yale.edu Kenneth.Carpenter-1@colorado.edu Citation for this article. Itano, W.M., and Carpenter, K., 2020, High-quality casts of the missing holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853 (Chondrichthyes, Petalodontidae) at the Field Museum of Natural History and their bearing on the validity and priority of the species: Geology of the Intermountain West, v. 7, p. 197–203, https://doi.org/10.31711/giw.v7.pp197-203. © 2020 Utah Geological Association. All rights reserved. For permission to use, copy, or distribute see the preceeding page or the UGA website, www.utahgeology.org, for information. Email inquiries to GIW@utahgeology.org. INTRODUCTION The holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853, is a tooth from the Cambridge Limestone Member of the Glenshaw Formation of the Conemaugh Group, Guern- sey County, Ohio. Petalodus is an extinct genus of car- tilaginous fishes related to sharks and the Cambridge Limestone is Upper Pennsylvanian (Missourian) in age (Martino, 2004). Safford (1853) published rough draw- ings of the holotype (figure 1) and a brief description in a short note. That note seems to have been unnoticed by other researchers for decades. During that period of neglect, P. alleghaniensis Leidy 1856 and P. destruc- tor Newberry and Worthen 1866 were described, based on teeth very similar to the holotype of P. ohioensis. In the description of yet another species of Petalodus, P. securiger, Hay (1895) noted Safford’s description of P. ohioensis and raised the possibility that some or all of the later-described species, P. alleghaniensis, P. destruc- tor, and P. securiger, might be junior synonyms of P. ohioensis. However, Hay (1895) hesitated to formally synonymize these species with P. ohioensis, in part be- cause Hay questioned the accuracy of Safford’s figures. Hay (1895, p. 563) remarked that “It would be interest- ing to know whether or not the type of Professor Saf- ford’s specimen is yet in existence.” Hay later reconsid- ered the status of P. ohioensis, since P. alleghaniensis, P. destructor, and P. securiger (as P. securis) are all listed as 198 High-quality Casts of the Missing Holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853 (Chondrichthyes, Petalodontidae) at the Field Museum of Natural History and their Bearing on the Validity and Priority of the Species Itano, W.M., and Carpenter, K. Geology of the Intermountain West 2020 Volume 7 junior synonyms of P. ohioensis in the bibliography of fossil vertebrates of North America (Hay, 1902). Whereas some researchers (Hansen, 1985, 1996; Dalla Vecchia, 1988; Ramovš, 1997a, 1997b; Lucas and Estep, 2000; Robb, 2003; Elliott and others, 2004; Hamm and Cicimurri, 2005; Brusatte, 2007; Ginter and others, 2010; Carpenter and Ottinger, 2018) have followed Hay in regarding P. ohioensis as the senior synonym, others (Miller, 1957; Miller and Mann, 1958; McNulty, 1963; Zidek, 1976; Goto and Okura, 2004; Monson, 2010) have followed Eastman (1896) in giving priority to the name P. alleghaniensis, apparently regarding P. ohioensis to be a nomen dubium, due to the inadequacy of Saf- ford’s description. The status of Petalodus ohioensis is difficult to resolve without having access to its holotype or even to an accurate illustration of it. INSTITUTIONAL ABBREVIATIONS FMNH = Field Museum of Natural History, Chica- go, Illinois; YPM = Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. CASTS AT THE YALE PEABODY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Recently, the present authors located two casts at the Yale Peabody Museum, accompanied by a label stating that they were copies of the holotype of Petalodus ohio- ensis and that they were received from the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (Carpenter and Itano, 2019). Figure 2 shows labial (A) and lingual (B) views of one of the casts. There seems to be no rea- son to doubt the authenticity of the casts, which corre- spond closely to the drawings of Safford (1853) (figure 1), even to the slight asymmetries of the crown margins. The casts were catalogued at the Yale Peabody Museum on September 18, 1930, but might have been received at an earlier date (D. Brinkman, Yale Peabody Museum, email communication, June 15, 2018). Currently, nei- ther the holotype of P. ohioensis nor casts of it, nor any record of them, can be located at the Museum of Com- parative Zoology (J. Cundiff, Museum of Comparative Zoology, email communication, June 15, 2018). Despite their low quality, the casts at the Yale Peabody Muse- um are sufficiently detailed to establish the validity of P. ohioensis. They confirm that P. alleghaniensis is a junior synonym of Petalodus ohioensis (Carpenter and Itano, 2019). It seems possible, even likely, that Safford would have sent a cast of the holotype to L. Agassiz, then at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, whom Safford (1853) credits with identifying the genus of the tooth. The poor quality of the Yale Peabody Museum casts might be a result of their being copies of a cast, once Figure 1. Petalodus ohioensis from Safford (1853, p. 142) in (1) labial and (2) lingual views. 199 High-quality Casts of the Missing Holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853 (Chondrichthyes, Petalodontidae) at the Field Museum of Natural History and their Bearing on the Validity and Priority of the Species Itano, W.M., and Carpenter, K. Geology of the Intermountain West 2020 Volume 7 held by the Museum of Comparative Zoology, rather than being copies of the original specimen. CASTS AT THE FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Recently, one of the authors (Itano) noticed the fol- lowing entry in a catalogue of type specimens in the Field Museum of Natural History (Bruner, 1992): Petalodus ohioensis (Safford, 1851) = Originally described as Getalodus ohioensis Saf- ford 1851 PF 673 Casts of holotype. Casts of 3 teeth. Pennsylvanian. Ohio: Guernsey County: Near Cambridge. Collector: J. M. Safford. Safford, J. M. 1853. Tooth of Getalodus ohioensis. American Journal of Science, 2nd ser., 16: 142. Desc. (p. 142) & fig. Figs. 1, 2. The description leaves no doubt that the tooth re- ferred to is the holotype of P. ohioensis. The date 1851 should be corrected to 1853, the date of Safford’s pub- lication. One of the authors (Itano) requested informa- tion from the Field Museum as to the status of the casts and received a photograph (figure 3) and registration information (figure 4) (W. Simpson, Field Museum of Natural History, email communication, January 21, 2020). Simpson also clarified that, although the entry in Bruner (1992) refers to “casts of 3 teeth,” there are actually three casts of the same tooth: one of the en- tire tooth and one each of only the labial or lingual side. The Field Museum casts are of better quality than those of the Yale Peabody Museum and reinforce the conclu- sions of Carpenter and Itano (2019) as to the validity and priority of Petalodus ohioensis. That the Field Mu- seum and Yale Peabody Museum casts are of the same tooth is clear by observation. The close correspondence of the asymmetric lingual faces (rightmost cast of fig- ure 3 versus figure 2B) is particularly striking. The Field Museum casts are important because they clearly show the bands of ridges at the base of the crown on the labial and lingual sides. The Yale Peabody Museum casts are too rough to show the ridges, which are a feature of all Petalodus teeth (Hansen, 1985). Bands of ridges on both labial and lingual sides distinguish Petalodus from sim- ilar genera, for example, Polyrhizodus, which has ridges only on the lingual side (Hansen, 1985). The handwritten note in figure 3, with the words, “Casts of Petalodus ohioensis, J. M. Safford, Nashville, Tenn., Presented by O. P. Hay,” together with the infor- mation from the registration record (figure 4) that the casts were received in 1896 from O.P. Hay, allows one to reconstruct a plausible series of events. James Mer- rill Safford was a professor at Cumberland University, Figure 2. Cast of the holotype of Petalodus ohioensis in (A) labial and (B) lingual views. Specimen number YPM PV 2861 from the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Scale bar = 1 cm. 200 High-quality Casts of the Missing Holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853 (Chondrichthyes, Petalodontidae) at the Field Museum of Natural History and their Bearing on the Validity and Priority of the Species Itano, W.M., and Carpenter, K. Geology of the Intermountain West 2020 Volume 7 Lebanon, Tennessee, from 1848 to 1873. From 1873 to 1900, Safford was a professor at the University of Nash- ville and at Vanderbilt University, both in Nashville, Tennessee (Stearns, 2018). One can speculate that, after writing the 1895 article, Hay wrote to Safford, who was then in Nashville, enquiring as to the status of the ho- lotype of P. ohioensis, received the casts shown in figure 3, and, in 1896, donated them to the Field Museum of Natural History, which was then called the Field Co- lumbian Museum. Based on the evidence of the casts, Hay might then have concluded that P. ohioensis was the senior synonym of P. alleghaniensis, P. destructor, and P. securiger, as is reflected in Hay (1902). Attempts by the present authors to locate the original holotype have so far been unsuccessful. CONCLUSIONS The casts of the holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Saf- ford 1853, FMNH PF 673, in the collections of the Field Museum of Natural History, show details not present on Figure 3. Three casts of the holotype of Petalodus ohioensis. Specimen number FMNH PF 673. From left to right: cast of labial side, three-dimensional cast, cast of lingual side. Photograph by W. Simpson (Field Museum of Natural History). Used with permission. 201 High-quality Casts of the Missing Holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853 (Chondrichthyes, Petalodontidae) at the Field Museum of Natural History and their Bearing on the Validity and Priority of the Species Itano, W.M., and Carpenter, K. Geology of the Intermountain West 2020 Volume 7 the casts in the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, YPM PV 2861. This reinforces the conclusions of the present authors (Carpenter and Ita- no, 2019) that P. ohioensis is a valid species and a senior synonym of P. alleghaniensis. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank William Simpson (Field Museum of Nat- ural History) for the photograph of the casts (figure 3) and the registration information (figure 4). We thank Dan Brinkman (Yale Peabody Museum of Natural His- tory, New Haven, Connecticut) for access to collections and for information on the casts registered as YPM PV 2861. We thank Jessica Cundiff (Museum of Compar- ative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts) for attempting to locate the holotype of P. ohioensis, or casts of it, in the museum collections. We thank James Kirkland (Utah Geological Survey) and Spencer Lucas (New Mexico Museum of Natural Histo- ry and Science) for their constructive reviews. Figure 4. Registration information for FMNH PF 673. Courtesy of W. Simpson (Field Museum of Natural History). Used with permission. 202 High-quality Casts of the Missing Holotype of Petalodus ohioensis Safford 1853 (Chondrichthyes, Petalodontidae) at the Field Museum of Natural History and their Bearing on the Validity and Priority of the Species Itano, W.M., and Carpenter, K. Geology of the Intermountain West 2020 Volume 7 REFERENCES Bruner, J.C., 1992, A catalogue of type specimens of fossil fishes in the Field Museum of Natural History: Fieldiana Geology, v. 23, p. 1–54. 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