Jawed Fish
Gnathostomata (; from Ancient Greek: (') 'jaw' + (') 'mouth') are jawed vertebrates. Gnathostome diversity comprises roughly 60,000 species, which accounts for 99% of all extant taxon, extant vertebrates, including all living bony fishes (both ray-finned fish, ray-finned and lobe-finned fish, lobe-finned, including their terrestrial animal, terrestrial tetrapod relatives) and cartilaginous fishes, as well as extinct prehistoric fish such as placoderms and acanthodians. Most gnathostomes have retained ancestral traits like true teeth, a stomach, and paired appendages (pectoral fin, pectoral and pelvic fins, limb (anatomy), limbs, wings, etc.). Other traits are elastin, horizontal semicircular canal of the inner ear, myelinated neurons, and an adaptive immune system which has discrete secondary lymphoid organs (spleen and thymus) and uses V(D)J recombination to create antigen recognition sites, rather than using genetic recombination in the variable lymphocyte receptor gene. It ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gnathostomata (echinoid)
The Gnathostomata are a superorder of sea urchin Sea urchins or urchins () are echinoderms in the class (biology), class Echinoidea. About 950 species live on the seabed, inhabiting all oceans and depth zones from the intertidal zone to deep seas of . They typically have a globular body cove ...s, including the familiar sand dollars. Gnathostomatans are irregular in shape, but unlike other irregular sea urchins, possess a feeding lantern. The mouth is located in the centre of the lower surface, as it is in most other sea urchins, but the anus is found to one side of the upper surface, rather than being central. The members of the group are adapted for burrowing in soft-bottomed marine environments. References * Echinoidea Extant Early Jurassic first appearances Animal superorders {{echinoidea-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Acanthodii
Acanthodii or acanthodians is an extinct class of gnathostomes (jawed fishes). They are currently considered to represent a paraphyletic grade of various fish lineages basal to extant Chondrichthyes, which includes living sharks, rays, and chimaeras. Acanthodians possess a mosaic of features shared with both osteichthyans (bony fish) and chondrichthyans (cartilaginous fish). In general body shape, they were similar to modern sharks, but their epidermis was covered with tiny rhomboid platelets like the scales of holosteians ( gars, bowfins). The popular name "spiny sharks" is because they were superficially shark-shaped, with a streamlined body, paired fins, a strongly upturned tail, and stout, largely immovable bony spines supporting all the fins except the tail—hence, "spiny sharks". However, acanthodians are not true sharks; their close relation to modern cartilaginous fish can lead them to be considered " stem-sharks". Acanthodians had a cartilaginous skeleton, bu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Placoderm
Placoderms (from Ancient Greek πλάξ [''plax'', ''plakos''] 'Plate (animal anatomy), plate' and δέρμα [''derma''] 'skin') are vertebrate animals of the class (biology), class Placodermi, an extinct group of prehistoric fish known from Paleozoic fossils during the Silurian and the Devonian geological period, periods. While their endoskeletons are mainly cartilaginous, their head and thorax were covered by articulated armour (zoology), armoured plates (hence the name), and the rest of the body was scale (zoology), scaled or naked depending on the species. Placoderms were among the first jawed fish (their fish jaw, jaws likely Evolution, evolved from the first pair of gill arches), as well as the first vertebrates to have true tooth, teeth. They were also the first fish clade to develop pelvic fins, the second set of paired fins and the homology (biology), homologous precursor to hindlimbs in tetrapods. 380-million-year-old fossils of three other genera, ''Incisoscutum'', ''M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prehistoric Fish
__NOTOC__ Prehistoric fish are early fish that are known only from fossil records. They are the earliest known vertebrates, and include the first and extinct fish that lived through the Cambrian to the Quaternary. The study of prehistoric fish is called ''paleoichthyology''. A few living forms, such as the coelacanth are also referred to as prehistoric fish, or even living fossils, due to their current rarity and similarity to extinct forms. Fish which have become recently extinct are not usually referred to as prehistoric fish. Lists of various prehistoric fishes include: * List of prehistoric jawless fish * List of placoderms * List of acanthodians * List of prehistoric cartilaginous fish *List of prehistoric bony fish This list of prehistoric bony fish is an attempt to create a comprehensive listing of all Genus, genera from the fossil record that have ever been considered to be bony fish (class Osteichthyes), excluding purely vernacular terms. The list includ ... * List ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Extinct
Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and recover. As a species' potential Range (biology), range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxon, Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the Fossil, fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. Over five billion species are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryotes globally, possibly many times more if microorganisms are included. Notable extinct animal species include Dinosaur, non-avian dinosaurs, Machairodontinae, saber-toothed cats, and mammoths. Through evolution, species arise through the process of specia ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cartilaginous Fish
Chondrichthyes (; ) is a class of jawed fish that contains the cartilaginous fish or chondrichthyans, which all have skeletons primarily composed of cartilage. They can be contrasted with the Osteichthyes or ''bony fish'', which have skeletons primarily composed of bone tissue. Chondrichthyes are aquatic vertebrates with paired fins, paired nares, placoid scales, conus arteriosus in the heart, and a lack of opercula and swim bladders. Within the infraphylum Gnathostomata, cartilaginous fishes are distinct from all other jawed vertebrates. The class is divided into two subclasses: Elasmobranchii (sharks, rays, skates and sawfish) and Holocephali ( chimaeras, sometimes called ghost sharks, which are sometimes separated into their own class). Extant chondrichthyans range in size from the finless sleeper ray to the over whale shark. Anatomy Skeleton The skeleton is cartilaginous. The notochord is gradually replaced by a vertebral column during development, e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Terrestrial Animal
Terrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land (e.g. cats, chickens, ants, most spiders), as compared with aquatic animals, which live predominantly or entirely in the water (e.g. fish, lobsters, octopuses), and semiaquatic animals, which rely on both aquatic and terrestrial habitats (e.g. platypus, most amphibians). Some groups of insects are terrestrial, such as ants, butterflies, earwigs, cockroaches, grasshoppers and many others, while other groups are partially aquatic, such as mosquitoes and dragonflies, which pass their larval stages in water. Alternatively, terrestrial is used to describe animals that live on the ground, as opposed to arboreal animals that live in trees. Ecological subgroups The term "terrestrial" is typically applied to species that live primarily on or in the ground, in contrast to arboreal species, who live primarily in trees, even though the latter are actually a specialized subgroup of the terre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lobe-finned Fish
Sarcopterygii (; )—sometimes considered synonymous with Crossopterygii ()—is a clade (traditionally a class or subclass) of vertebrate animals which includes a group of bony fish commonly referred to as lobe-finned fish. These vertebrates are characterised by prominent muscular limb buds (lobes) within their fins, which are supported by articulated appendicular skeletons. This is in contrast to the other clade of bony fish, the Actinopterygii, which have only skin-covered bony spines supporting the fins. The tetrapods, a mostly terrestrial clade of vertebrates, are now recognized as having evolved from sarcopterygian ancestors and are most closely related to lungfishes. Their paired pectoral and pelvic fins evolved into limbs, and their foregut diverticulum eventually evolved into air-breathing lungs. Cladistically, this would make the tetrapods a subgroup within Sarcopterygii and thus sarcopterygians themselves. As a result, the phrase "lobe-finned fish" normally refe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ray-finned Fish
Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of skin supported by radially extended thin bony spines called '' lepidotrichia'', as opposed to the bulkier, fleshy lobed fins of the sister clade Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish). Resembling folding fans, the actinopterygian fins can easily change shape and wetted area, providing superior thrust-to-weight ratios per movement compared to sarcopterygian and chondrichthyian fins. The fin rays attach directly to the proximal or basal skeletal elements, the radials, which represent the articulation between these fins and the internal skeleton (e.g., pelvic and pectoral girdles). The vast majority of actinopterygians are teleosts. By species count, they dominate the subphylum Vertebrata, and constitute nearly 99% of the over 30,000 extant ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bony Fish
Osteichthyes ( ; ), also known as osteichthyans or commonly referred to as the bony fish, is a Biodiversity, diverse clade of vertebrate animals that have endoskeletons primarily composed of bone tissue. They can be contrasted with the Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish) and the extinct placoderms and acanthodians, which have endoskeletons primarily composed of cartilage. The vast majority of extant taxon, extant fish are members of Osteichthyes, being an extremely diverse and abundant group consisting of 45 order (biology), orders, over 435 family (biology), families and 28,000 species. The group is divided into two main clades, the ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii, which makes up the vast majority of extant fish) and the lobe-finned fish (Sarcopterygii, which gave rise to all land vertebrates, i.e. tetrapods). The oldest known fossils of bony fish are about 425 million years old from the late Silurian, which are also transitional fossils showing a dentition, tooth pattern th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Extant Taxon
Neontology is a part of biology that, in contrast to paleontology, studies and deals with living (or, more generally, '' recent'') organisms. It is the study of extant taxa (singular: extant taxon): taxa (such as species, genera and families) with members still alive, as opposed to (all) being extinct. For example: * The Indian elephant (''Elephas maximus'') is an extant species, and the woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is an extinct species. * The moose (''Alces alces'') is an extant species, and the Irish elk (''Megaloceros giganteus'') is an extinct species. * In the group of molluscs known as the cephalopods, there were approximately 600 extant species and 7,500 extinct species. A taxon can be classified as extinct if it is broadly agreed or certified that no members of the group are still alive. Conversely, an extinct taxon can be reclassified as extant if there are new discoveries of living species (" Lazarus species"), or if previously known extant species ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vertebrate
Vertebrates () are animals with a vertebral column (backbone or spine), and a cranium, or skull. The vertebral column surrounds and protects the spinal cord, while the cranium protects the brain. The vertebrates make up the subphylum Vertebrata with some 65,000 species, by far the largest ranked grouping in the phylum Chordata. The vertebrates include mammals, birds, amphibians, and various classes of fish and reptiles. The fish include the jawless Agnatha, and the jawed Gnathostomata. The jawed fish include both the Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous fish and the Osteichthyes, bony fish. Bony fish include the Sarcopterygii, lobe-finned fish, which gave rise to the tetrapods, the animals with four limbs. Despite their success, vertebrates still only make up less than five percent of all described animal species. The first vertebrates appeared in the Cambrian explosion some 518 million years ago. Jawed vertebrates evolved in the Ordovician, followed by bony fishes in the Devonian. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |