Hello all,
You can now downoad Johannes Lepiksaar's last version of "Osteologia Pisces". Many of you have copies of the first or second edition. This third edition includes some bones that was omitted in earlier versions, and there are also added new pictures of sturgeon bones, and some fossil taxa. I have retyped the pages of contents that are low in contrast in the original.
Lepiksaar's Osteologia Pisces was his proposal for nomenclature of various details of each skeletal element in Teleost fishes. He stressed that this work should serve as a step in the creation of a "Nomina Anatomica" for the skeleton of fishes.
To have a common anatomical nomenclature is instrumental when we describe characters that identify taxa or the definition of a measurement. Lepiksaar followed the tradition in anatomical work and used descriptive terms in latin language. This nomenclature in latin then serves as a common reference as you translate the terms to the language you decide to use in a specific situation (Wheeler & Jones in their Cambridge Manual on Fishes in archaeology ironically noted that Lepiksaar's latin was obsolete and that it was better to use "common language" (that is british english). Well many roots of english language is in fact in latin.)
Lepiksaar's work contains general advices om the preparation of fish specimens for skeletons. The main is the plates with an idealized picture of each skeletal element indicating the details, and after each "ideal bone" there are given examples from a number of species of various families (mostly from North European freshwater and marine taxa).
As an example of constructive use of the "Osteologis Pisces" I would like to recommend the thesis of Eufrasia Rosello Izquierda ("Arqueoictiofaunas Ibericas. Aproximacion metodologica y bio-cultural", 1989, Univ. Autonoma, Madrid), which adopted Lepiksaar's nomenclature to taxa occurring in spanish waters.
You can download Lepiksaar's work from the home page of Gothenburg Natural History Museum (GNM)
http://media1.vgregion.se/vastarvet/gnm/pdf/Lepiksaar-Fishbone_manual_3rd_ed.pdf
regards
Leif Jonsson
Gothenburg Natural History Museum (GNM)
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