摘要：The ichthyofauna of the Zorzino Limestone represents an important proof of the richness and varietyreached by bony fishes during the Norian and, at the same time, it testifies the beginning of the faunaltransition which will be realized during the Jurassic. The thousands of specimens and the extraordinary qualityof preservation found in the fossiliferous levels of this unit allowed, in the last years, not only to follow sucha crucial moment in the evolution of vertebrates, but also to reconstruct the mode of life and the trophicadaptations reached by the different groups, living in the depositional basins. As evidence of this peculiarevolutionary period, the large predators at the highest trophic levels are still represented by ’primitive’ basalactinopterygians; on the contrary, the most derived neopterygians specialized in durophagy, a trophic nichepreviously almost unexploited by actinopterygians. Within the main trophic categories, anyway, we can finddifferent morphological specializations, which probably allowed the fishes to exploit most of the availabletrophic resources.
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