Large-bodied sabre-toothed anchovies

It was a great joy to work on this commission with Alessio Capobianco and Matt Friedmann and it helped me in many ways to further develop my underwater painting skills.

What you see here is a Monosmilus, a large stem engraulid, pursuing some smaller relatives, the size of the average modern anchovies. Our monster with the kindergarten drawing dentition is 
interrupted by a basal whale, Dalanistes, swooping in for a kill. 
In these shallow Eocene seas the hunter quickly becomes the hunted. 
Monosmilus from Pakistan and Clupeopsis from Belgium form a new clade of medium to large predatory fish. They are unique for their dentition, large, asymmetrical tooth rows in the lower jaw and a single, enormous fang on the vomer, also off set.

For more information you can read the paper open access here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi…