Osteolepididae is an

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

of primitive, fish-like

tetrapodomorph The Tetrapodomorpha (also known as Choanata) are a clade of vertebrates consisting of tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates) and their closest sarcopterygian relatives that are more closely related to living tetrapods than to living lungfish. Advance ...

s (the

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

that contains modern

tetrapod Tetrapods (; ) are four-limbed vertebrate animals constituting the superclass Tetrapoda (). It includes extant and extinct amphibians, sauropsids ( reptiles, including dinosaurs and therefore birds) and synapsids (pelycosaurs, extinct theraps ...

s and their extinct relatives) that lived during the

Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the Silurian, million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, Mya. It is named after Devon, England, whe ...

period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...

. The family is generally thought to be

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

, with the traits that characterise the family being widely distributed among basal tetrapodomorphs and other osteichthyans. Some of genera historically placed in Osteolepididae have more recently been assigned to the family

Megalichthyidae Megalichthyidae is an extinct family of tetrapodomorphs which lived from the Middle– Late Devonian to the Early Permian. They are known primarily from freshwater deposits, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere (Europe, the Middle East, North Afr ...

, which appears to be a

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

group.

Genera

Below is a list of genera regarded as osteolepidids at some point: * ''

Chrysolepis ''Chrysolepis'' is a small genus of plants in the family Fagaceae, endemic to the western United States. Its two species have the common name chinquapin. The genus occurs from western Washington south to the Transverse Ranges in Southern Califor ...

'' * ''

Ectosteorhachis ''Ectosteorhachis'' is a genus of prehistoric lobe-finned fish that lived during the Permian period ( Cisuralian epoch, about 299 to 272 million years ago). It belonged to the group of Tetrapodomorpha and to the family of Megalichthyidae Me ...

'' * '' Geptolepis'' * '' Glyptopomus'' * ''

Gogonasus ''Gogonasus'' (meaning "snout from Gogo") was a lobe-finned fish known from three-dimensionally preserved 380-million-year-old fossils found from the Gogo Formation in Western Australia. It lived in the Late Devonian period, on what was once a ...

'' * '' Greiserolepis'' * '' Gyroptychius'' * "''Diplopterus''" * ''

Kenichthys ''Kenichthys'' is a genus of sarcopterygian fish from the Devonian period, and a member of the clade tetrapodomorpha. The only known species of the genus is ''Kenichthys campbelli'' (named for the Australian palaeontologist Ken Campbell), the fi ...

'' * ''

Latvius ''Latvius'' is an extinct genus of prehistoric sarcopterygian or lobe-finned fish. See also * Sarcopterygii * List of sarcopterygians * List of prehistoric bony fish A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: ...

'' * '' Medoevia'' * ''

Megalichthys ''Megalichthys'' is a genus of prehistoric lobe-finned fish which lived during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods. It is the type genus of the family Megalichthyidae. The type species is ''M. hibberti''. The species ''M. mullisoni,'' named f ...

'' * '' Megapomus'' * '' Megistolepis'' * '' Muranjilepis'' * ''

Osteolepis ''Osteolepis'' (from el, ὀστέον 'bone' and el, λεπίς 'scale') is an extinct genus of lobe-finned fish from the Devonian period. It lived in the Orcadian Basin, Lake Orcadie of northern Scotland. ''Osteolepis'' was about long, an ...

'' * '' Peregrina'' * '' Shirolepis'' * '' Thursius''

References

Tetrapodomorphs Devonian bony fish Prehistoric lobe-finned fish families Devonian first appearances Devonian extinctions Paraphyletic groups Taxa named by Edward Drinker Cope {{paleo-lobefinned-fish-stub