Jurassic teleost diversity and abundance changes, recorded by otolith and cephalopod statolith assemblages

We describe otolith and cephalopod statolith assemblages from the Jurassic of Lithuania, Poland, and the U.K. We report two new teleost fish genera (<i>Juraelops</i> gen. nov. and <i>Vodyanoi</i> gen. nov.), and eight new fish species (<i>Pteralbula jurassica</i> sp. nov., <i>Protalbula dorsetensis</i> sp. nov., <i>Palealbula ventai</i> sp. nov., <i>Palealbula crenulata</i> sp. nov., <i>Juraelops prodigiosum</i> sp. nov., <i>Vodyanoi schwarzhansi</i> sp. nov., <i>Vodyanoi stringeri</i> sp. nov., and <i>Archaeotolithus solidus</i> sp. nov.). We find significant dominance of basally branching decabrachians over bony fish in nearly all investigated assemblages and that teleosts are numerically dominated by leptolepiforms. Based on our findings, we propose that crown-teleosts diversified during the Middle Jurassic and that their radiation started in the Late Jurassic. The shift between statolith-to-otolith abundance ratios in the investigated assemblages documents a change from a cephalopod-dominated nekton during the Jurassic to a mostly teleost-dominated nekton during the Cretaceous. We propose that this change started as early as during the latest Jurassic.