Dear Dr. Martín-Abad,

We are very thankful for the useful suggestions made by the two reviewers and yourself, and have carefully revised the original version of the manuscript accordingly. We incorporated most of the corrections and suggestions, but we disagree on a few of points, which we refute in the corresponding sections following this message.

Thank you for your dedication to our manuscript, we hope you’ll find this new version appropriate for publication!

Best regards,

Adriana López-Arbarello

Revision round #1

- Line 100: Is the spelling "ruppelli" correct? Might it be missing an "e"?

Thanks for calling our attention on this! There was actually a mistake, but not the “e”. Bellotti spelled the name “PHOLIDOPHORUS RUPPELII” The name was later ‘corrected’ to ‘rüpelli’ or ‘ruepelli’, but dealing with another case, I recently check The Code and found out that there is no need and it would not be right to change the original spelling in this case. This is clearly explained in the ICZN Art. 32.5 (see also the example). We now added a note to explain this issue in the Remarks subsection.

- Line 153: There seems to be something repeated: upper Ladinian, Middle Triassic late Ladinian.

Corrected.

- Lines 157 and 202: First it is stated that there is ganoin present on the tubercles, but later it is said that there is no evidence of ganoin.

Corrected.

- Line 226: I think Jugal does not need to be capitalized.

Corrected.

- Lines 370-372 and figure 5: I am not sure if the small specimen would really fit within the trend shown by the E. megalepis specimens. The specimen is much smaller than the E. megalepis specimens examined, so if it would fit their trend, I would expect it to show a much larger difference; the PreA/SL value is only slightly smaller than that of the smallest E. megalepis specimen, and the PreD/SL is basically the same for both specimens. Of course, it would depend on the growth pattern of the species, and it could totally be possible that it would show changes on growth throughout ontogeny and therefore fit within the trend; but that argument could also be used just the other way around. Therefore, I think that the suggestion of the small specimen possibly representing a smaller E. megalepis individual should be taken with a grain of salt.

We rephrased this section attending to your comment and suggestion. Although it is true that the small MSCNIO P669 is significantly smaller than the smallest studied specimen of E. megalepis, it still plots along the trend of ontogenetic variation, i.e. left to and roughly at the same slope than the E. megalepis specimens in Fig. 5a. The type of A. ruppelii plots very close to MSCNIO P669 in this figure, but it is significantly larger. Considering its size, if it would follow the trend, it would plot close to the 87,5 mm SL of E. megalepis.

- Figure 6: Following the prevous comment, the small “S”. bellottii specimen does not seem to fit in any trend with the E. megalepis specimens in this figure. Also regarding this figure, I would suggest to place the two graphs side-by-side, instead of one on top of the other, to save some space. And also perhaps it would be easier to place the specimens in the same order in both graphs.

We changed the figure placing the charts side by side, and reordered the taxa following your suggestion. 

- Line 388: is the spelling correct in "curioni" here? Might it be missing an "i"?

Haeckel listed the species as “Palaeoniscus curioni" with one “i” and it was taken literally by Bellotti (1873) and Bassani (1886). However, the name becomes available with De Alessandri (1910), who wrote “Pholidophorus curionii”. Althoughthis is the correct original spelling, it would not be correct to change the spelling used by previous authors. Anyway, thanks for calling our attention on this because it was necessary to delete one “i" from the name at the beginning of the paragraph.

- Lines 469-474: The enumeration of the five synapomorphies of the clade Subortichthyidae are not clear to me. Three are denoted with an asterisk in the previous paragraph. Another one, the posterior end of the maxilla located posterior to the orbit, is listed but I do not understand why it is not also denoted in the previous paragraph. And then you mention that there are two more, but only one is explained (which is in fact already mentioned at the beginning of the previous paragraph). I would suggest trying to re-write these two paragraphs so that it is more clearly explained which are the 9 diagnostic characters of the clade, which of them are present in the studied species, and which are not.

We rephrased these paragraphs following your suggestion. 

Review by anonymous reviewer 1, 18 Apr 2024 15:54

    Small typos or suggested changes to wording have been highlighted in yellow and comment stickers in the attached PDF of the manuscript.

Corrected.

    Check the reference list versus the text, I could not find a few citations. I have left little comment stickers on the ones I could not find.

Corrected.

Terminology for Skull Roofing Bones 

The authors should reconsider the use of a terminology based on tradition for the bones of the skull roof, specifically frontal and parietal. The terms parietal and postparietal should be used because it is terminology based on homology rather than tradition. If the authors do not want to change the terminology in the text because of previous publications using those terms for other halecomorph taxa, perhaps they can use parietal (frontal) and postparietal (parietal) so that both sets of terms are used. There seems to be examples of other authors describing these bones in other halecomorph fishes in this fashion (Arratia & Herzog, 2007). A description can be added to the materials and methods describing that the term in the parentheses is terminology based on tradition. If this method is not preferred, maybe an explanation can be added in the text that the terms frontal and parietal are being used in the text in the traditional sense so that comparisons to previous publications is easier, but that these bones would be referred to as parietal and postparietal if a terminology based on homology was used. Schultze 2008 and Wiley 2008 could be good citations for a review of the terminology of skull roofing bones.

Schultze's anatomical nomenclature is based on hypotheses of homology that I do not accept and therefore have never used. Similarly, Schultze's nomenclature has not been adopted by the majority of Mesozoic fish workers and most ichthyologists. The homologies of several bones in the skull of ray-finned fishes are problematic and have been debated for over a century.

As we utilize the anatomical nomenclature employed by the majority of our colleagues, there is no necessity for us to elucidate the reasons behind our divergence from Schultze's nomenclature. Were we to do so, we would be compelled to justify our rejection of other terms proposed by other authors, a process that would not only significantly extend the manuscript, but also present considerable challenges. A formal rejection of one of the alternative nomenclatures would necessitate a comprehensive analysis and discussion, which would require a separate paper. Consequently, we have chosen not to follow this recommendation.

Figure 3 

I like the overlay of the line drawing over the photograph of the specimen as that is helpful to translate the interpretation to the specimen itself but I would suggest the authors also consider adding a part C to this figure that has the line drawing alone to make it a little easier to view. I am not recommending the removal of the overlay of the drawing over the photograph but the addition of just the line drawing as an additional part of Figure 3.

We added a part C to Figure 3 as requested.