chiselmouth

The chiselmouth (Gila alutacea) is a species of freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Leuciscidae. This fish is found in western North America. It is named for the sharp hard plate on its lower jaw, which is used to scrape rocks for algae.

The chiselmouth (Gila alutacea) is a species of freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Leuciscidae. This fish is found in western North America. It is named for the sharp hard plate on its lower jaw, which is used to scrape rocks for algae. ==Taxonomy== The chiselmouth was first formally described as Acrocheilus alutaceus in 1855 by Louis Agassiz and Charles Pickering with its type locality given as Willamette Falls, Oregon City, Clackamas County, Oregon and Wallawalla River at Whitman, then part of Walla Walla County. Agassiz and Pickering classified this species in the genus Acrocheilus, of which it was considered the only extant species. In addition to A. alutaceus, an extinct species, Acrocheilus latus (Cope, 1870) is known from the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene-aged Glenns Ferry & Ringold Formation of Idaho and Washington. Acrocheilus is now considered to be a synonym of Gila, within the subfamily Laviniinae of the family Leuciscidae. ==References== (1987): Fishes of the Great Basin: 149–151. University of Nevada Press, Reno. (1997): Phylogenetic Relationships of the Creek Chubs and the Spine-Fins: an Enigmatic Group of North American Cyprinid Fishes (Actinopterygii: Cyprinidae). Cladistics 13(3): 187–205. (HTML abstract) nl:Acrocheilus

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