Cladistia
Sign in to saveCladistia is a subclass of bony fishes whose only living members are the bichirs of tropical Africa. Their major synapomorphies are a dorsal fin with independent rays, and a posteriorly elongated parasphenoid.
Species
GENUS
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumChordata
via GBIF
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- taxon
- Parent taxon
- Actinopterygii
- Image
- Polypterus senegalus.jpg
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- Commons category
- Cladistia
- taxon rank
- class
- taxon name
- Cladistia
- topic's main category
- Category:Cladistia
- start time
- 346000000-
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~5 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Taxonomy
- Disputed members
- References
Cladistia is a subclass of bony fishes whose only living members are the bichirs of tropical Africa. Their major synapomorphies are a dorsal fin with independent rays, and a posteriorly elongated parasphenoid.
Cladistia are the earliest diverging branch of living Actinopterygii, and are thought to have diverged from the Actinopteri, the group which includes all other living ray finned fish, by the Carboniferous. However, the fossil range for the only extant order (Polypteriformes) is comparatively young, only reaching as far back as the mid-Cretaceous of South America and Africa, and the two extant genera of bichir only diverged around the Miocene.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Cladistia” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.