Lycopteridae is an extinct family of

freshwater Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. The term excludes seawater and brackish water, but it does include non-salty mi ...

osteoglossomorph Osteoglossomorpha is a group of bony fish in the Teleostei. Notable members A notable member is the arapaima (''Arapaima gigas''), the largest freshwater fish in South America and one of the largest bony fishes alive. Other notable members inclu ...

ray-finned fishes Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class (biology), class of Osteichthyes, bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built ...

Genera

* ''

Lycoptera ''Lycoptera'' is an extinct genus of fish that lived from Early Cretaceous, Lower Cretaceous, Barremian to Aptian in present-day China, North Korea, Mongolia and Siberia. Although there is record from Jurassic Formation in Siberia, its age remain ...

'' Müller, 1848 * '' Aokiichthys'' Yabumoto 1994 * '' Changichthys'' Su 1991 * '' Yungkangichthys'' Chang and Chou 1974

Description

These ray-finned fishes were small, often only a finger's length, with small, almost circular scales.

Distribution

They occurred in East Asian rivers and lakes from the

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 143.1 Mya. ...

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...

. Fossils of these fishes have been found in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

and

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

References

* Arno Hermann Müller: ''Lehrbuch der Paläozoologie. Band III, Vertebraten, Teil 1.'' Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1985 *

Joseph S. Nelson Joseph (Joe) Schieser Nelson (April 12, 1937 – August 9, 2011) was a Canadian ichthyologist. He is best known for the book ''Fishes of the World'' (1st edition 1976, 4th edition 2006), which is the standard reference in fish systematics and evol ...

: ''

Fishes of the World ''Fishes of the World'' is a standard reference for the systematics of fishes. It was first written in 1976 by the American ichthyologist Joseph S. Nelson (1937–2011). Now in its fifth edition (2016), the work is a comprehensive overview of t ...

''. John Wiley & Sons, 2006, * V.N. Yakovle
Systematics of the family Lycopteridae
International Geology Review - Volume 8, Issue 1, 1966

External links

* *
The Paleobiology Database

† A dagger, obelisk, or obelus is a typographical mark that usually indicates a footnote if an asterisk has already been used. The symbol is also used to indicate death (of people) or extinction (of species or languages). It is one of the mo ...

Jurassic bony fish Cretaceous bony fish Freshwater fish Jurassic first appearances Cretaceous extinctions {{paleo-rayfinned-fish-stub