Osteoglossiformes is a relatively primitive order of ray-finned fish that contains two sub-orders, the Osteoglossoidei and the Notopteroidei. All of at least 245 living species inhabit freshwater. They are found in South America, Africa, Australia and southern Asia, having first evolved in Gondwana before that continent broke up. In 2008, several new species of marine osteoglossiforms were described from the Danish Eocene Fur Formation, dramatically increasing the diversity of this group. This implies that the Osteoglossomorpha is not a primary freshwater fish group with the osteoglossiforms having a typical Gondwana distribution.
Arowanas are freshwater bony fish of the subfamily Osteoglossinae, also known as bony tongues. In this family of fish, the head is bony and the elongated body is covered by large, heavy scales, with a mosaic pattern of canals. The dorsal and anal fins have soft rays and are long based, while the pectoral and ventral fins are small. The name "bonytongues" is derived from a toothed bone on the floor of the mouth, the "tongue", equipped with teeth that bite against teeth on the roof of the mouth. The arowana is a facultative air breather and can obtain oxygen from air by sucking it into its swim bladder, which is lined with capillaries like lung tissue.
Neopterygii is a subclass of ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii). Neopterygii includes the Holostei and the Teleostei, of which the latter comprise the vast majority of extant fishes, and over half of all living vertebrate species. While living holosteans include only freshwater taxa, teleosts are diverse in both freshwater and marine environments. Many new species of teleosts are scientifically described each year.
Osteoglossomorpha is a group of bony fish in the Teleostei.
The arapaima, pirarucu, or paiche is any large species of bonytongue in the genus Arapaima native to the Amazon and Essequibo basins of South America. Arapaima is the type genus of the subfamily Arapaiminae within the family Osteoglossidae. They are among the world's largest freshwater fish, reaching as much as 3 m (9.8 ft) in length. They are an important food fish. They have declined in the native range due to overfishing and habitat loss. In contrast, arapaima have been introduced to several tropical regions outside the native range, where they are sometimes considered invasive species. In Kerala, India, arapaima escaped from aquaculture ponds after floods in 2018. Its Portuguese name, pirarucu, derives from the Tupi language words pira and urucum, meaning "red fish".
The African arowana or Nile arowana is a species of bonytongue. Despite being called an "arowana", the African arowana is more closely related to arapaimas, the only other members in the subfamily Arapaiminae, than the South American, Asian, and Australian arowanas in the subfamily Osteoglossinae. Compared to these, the African arowana has a more terminal mouth and is the only one that feeds extensively on plankton.
Scleropages is a genus of fish in the family Osteoglossidae found in Asia and Australia. All of these species are carnivorous and have great jumping ability. These species are highly valued as aquarium fish, particularly by those from Asian cultures. In 2003, a study redescribed several naturally occurring color varieties of S. formosus into four separate species. The majority of researchers dispute these redescriptions, arguing that the published data are insufficient to justify recognizing more than one Southeast Asian species of Scleropages and that divergent haplotypes used to distinguish the color strains into isolated species were found within a single color strain, contradicting the findings. They are considered monotypic, consisting of closely related haplotypes based on color. The ancestor of the Australian arowanas: S. jardinii and S. leichardti, diverged from the ancestor of the Asian arowanas about 140 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period. The morphological similarity of all seven species shows that little evolutionary change has taken place recently for these ancient fish. The genus had a much wider distribution during the early Cenozoic, with fossil remains known from the Paleocene of Niger and Belgium, and from the Eocene of China.
Notopteroidei is a suborder of the order Osteoglossiformes that contains the extant families Gymnarchidae (aba), Notopteridae and Mormyridae (elephantfishes), as well as several extinct taxa. The Mormyridae are weakly electric fishes, able to locate prey in turbid water.
Lycoptera is an extinct genus of fish that lived from 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 remains questionable. It is known from abundant fossils representing sixteen species, which serve as important index fossil used to date geologic formations in China. Along with the genus Peipiaosteus, Lycoptera has been considered a defining member of the Jehol Biota, a prehistoric ecosystem famous for its feathered dinosaurs, which flourished for 20 million years during the Early Cretaceous, where it occurs abundantly in often monospecific beds, where they are thought to have died in seasonal mass death events. Lycoptera is a crown group teleost belonging to an early diverging lineage of the Osteoglossomorpha, which contains living mooneyes, arapaima, arowana, elephantfish and knifefish/featherbacks.
Bathysoma is an extinct genus of marine lampriform ray-finned fish from the early-mid Paleocene. It contains a single species, B. lutkeni from Sweden. Its fossils are common in exposures of the Danian København Limestone Formation at Limhamns kalkbrott, one of the largest quarries in northern Europe. A single specimen is also known from an erratic boulder from the Selandian Lellinge Greensand Formation of southern Sweden.
Opsithrissops is an extinct genus of prehistoric bony fish that lived during the Thanetian stage of the Paleocene epoch. It is a 120 centimetres (3.9 ft) fish in the family Osteoglossiformes which includes other bony-tongues such as the extant species of arowana and arapaima.
Amiopsis is an extinct genus of prehistoric freshwater and marine bony fish belonging to the family Amiidae, making it closely related to the modern bowfin. Fossils are known from the Late Jurassic Solnhofen Limestone, Germany, the Early Cretaceous Purbeck Group, England, La Pedrera de Rúbies Formation, Spain and Bernnissant Iguanodon locality, Belgium and the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of the Balkans. The monophyly of the genus is questionable, due to it being based on a single character, "the presence of three or more lateral fossae on each side of most abdominal centra". Remains previously assigned to this genus from the Early Cretaceous Las Hoyas, Spain have been moved into the new genus Hispanamia.
Brychaetus is an extinct genus of prehistoric marine bonytongue fish known from the Late Cretaceous to the late Eocene of Europe, North America, and northern Africa.
Arapaiminae is a subfamily of freshwater osteoglossiform (bony-tongued) fishes belonging to the family Osteoglossidae. It includes the South American arapaimas of the Amazon and Essequibo basins and the African arowana from the watersheds of the Sahelo-Sudanese region, Senegal, Gambia, and parts of Eastern Africa. This subfamily is sometimes raised to the rank of family, as Arapaimidae. A commonly used synonym is Heterotidinae, but according to the ICZN, Arapaiminae has priority.
The Oulad Abdoun Basin is a phosphate sedimentary basin located in Morocco, near the city of Khouribga. It is the largest in Morocco, comprising 44% of Morocco's phosphate reserves, and at least 26.8 billion tons of phosphate. It is also known as an important site for vertebrate fossils, with deposits ranging from the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian-Turonian) to the Eocene epoch (Ypresian), a period of about 25 million years.
Fortignathus is an extinct genus of dyrosaurid or peirosaurid crocodylomorph known from the Late Cretaceous Echkar Formation in Niger. It contains a single species, Fortignathus felixi, which was originally named as a species of Elosuchus in 2002.
Xixiaichthys is an extinct genus of osteoglossiform fish that lived in China during the Early Cretaceous and was found in the Madongshan Formation and also the Xinminbao Group. The type species is Xixiaichthys tongxiensis and is based on the holotype, a complete skeleton, and several other specimens of varying completeness.
This list of fossil fish research presented in 2024 is a list of new taxa of jawless vertebrates, placoderms, acanthodians, fossil cartilaginous fishes, bony fishes, and other fishes that were described during the year, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleoichthyology that occurred in 2024.
Lamprimorpha is a superorder of marine ray-finned fishes, representing a basal group of the highly diverse clade Acanthomorpha. Represented today only by the order Lampriformes, recent studies have recovered other basal fossil species of the group dating as far back as the Cenomanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. Some of these fossil taxa, such as the paraphyletic genus Aipichthys, are among the oldest known fossil acanthomorphs, and overall they appear to have been a major component of the marine fish fauna at that time. Lamprimorpha is thought to be the sister group to the superorder Paracanthopterygii, which contains cod, dories, and trout-perches.
The Tenejapa-Lacandón Formation is a geological formation and lagerstätte in southern Mexico and western Guatemala. It preserves fossils dating to the Early Paleocene.
