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Serrasalmo scotopterus

Dark-Finned Saw-bellied Salmon.

1841

Schomb. Drawings, No. 64

HISTORICAL AUTHOR

This drawing is still more longitudinal in form than the two proceding (S. emarginatus and S. undulatus), but keeps the general characters. The dorsal outline is very undulated, and rises suddenly frm the head in a hump; the head is large, and the rather elongated; the rictus is large,  and is supplied with a large angular teeth. The general colour, until slightly below the lateral line, is greyish blue, changing to white or silvery below; all the fins are very dark, and contrast with the pale greyish blue tine of the body; the two dorsal, caudal, and anal fins are dark bluish green, the first with the dark band across, which we have seen in the two former fishes; the second dorsal nearly equidistant between the first and the tail. The tail somewhat forked, but with the lower lobe unequally elongated, and near the tip of a dark band borders on the edges. The pectoral and ventral fins are small in proportion, and are greenish brown. The iris is coloured orange red. Notes state, that the "scales are small, elliptical, fringed, and somewhat adhesive; the teeth are a single row in each jaw, large and serrated; opercula are striated; tongue is round and fleshy; the intestines have no appendices; air-bladder double, - the first oval, second long and pointed. Taken in the Rio Branco in April, with the hook baited with fish."

D. 15 - P. 10 - V. 7 - A. 31 - C. 25 _ Ribs, 11 pairs, large - Vert. 33.