October 2025: publication Catfishes, a Highly Diversified Group
The African Fossil Catfishes
This chapter reviews the fossil record of African catfishes and helps understand their evolutionary history on this continent. The researchers who have described these fossils and the context of their studies are presented, shedding light on the disparity of the information available. The African catfish fossil record includes marine forms, but above all, freshwater forms, and began early in the Cenozoic. The still-uncertain attributions of Palaeogene forms are discussed. From the Eocene onwards, catfishes are systematically present in all the continent’s freshwater ichthyological assemblages. The fossil record of the extant African catfish families is presented in relation to their known evolutionary history. The paleodiversifications and distributions are discussed in regard to their paleoecology and the paleogeographical contexts, including their origins, with a first dispersal into Africa in the Palaeogene (the root of the clade of the extant families endemic to Africa) and with at least a second dispersal in the Neogene, from Asia (Afro-Asian families), the possible role of saltwater tolerance to explain the dispersal in certain freshwater families, and the case of fossil species of the marine family Ariidae adapted to freshwater, such as Carlarius gigas today.
References
Otero O. 2025 – African fossil catfishes – In Arratia G., Reis R.E. (eds), Catfishes, a Highly Diversified Group, Vol. 2: Catfishes, Evolution and Phylogeny – Doi: 10.1201/9781003374312-5