The value of certain morphological features in the age determination of the small mouth yellow fish Barbus Holubi [Steindachner, 1894]

Abstract

The oldest fossil records of fish in South Africa come from the Witteberg Series in the Cape Province (Fig. 1) , These fish lived in the Palaeozoic Era about 250 million years ago and had ganoid scales. They could have been fresh water or marine forms. These fish gradually died out and were later replaced in the Mesozoic Era, about 150-175 million years ago, by endemic genera. Fossils of these can be found in the Beaufort beds of the Karroo System and they were probably fresh water forms. These fish were all destroyed by volcanic activity and drought. No fossils were deposited during the Tertiary Era nor during the past 60 million years in South Africa. Only during the past one million years have our present day fish moved down from North Africa and Asia, into Southern Africa. The genus Barbus (Cuvier and Cloquet, 1816) moved right down to the southern tip of the continent where most species today belong to the family Cyprinidae. This includes the mud fish and yellow fish as well as many minnows (Jubb 1967).