The Gonorynchiformes are an order of ray-finned fish that includes the important food source, the milkfish, and a number of lesser-known types, both marine and freshwater.
Chanidae is a family of fishes which has a number of fossil genera and one monotypic extant genus which contains the milkfish.
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.
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.
The freshwater butterflyfish or African butterflyfish is a species of osteoglossiform fish native to freshwater habitats in the Niger and Congo basins of western and central Africa. It is the only extant species in the family Pantodontidae. It is not closely related to saltwater butterflyfishes.
Pantodontidae is a family of ray-finned fish in the order Osteoglossiformes. It contains the living freshwater butterflyfish of Africa, as well as several extinct marine species from the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of the Sannine Formation in Lebanon.
Chanopsis is an extinct genus of prehistoric freshwater bonytongue relative that lived from the late Aptian to the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous epoch. It contains a single species, C. lombardi from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Berybolcensis is an extinct genus of prehistoric marine ray-finned fish that lived in the early Eocene. It contains a single species, B. leptacanthus, from the Monte Bolca lagerstatten of Italy. It was a member of the Holocentridae, making it related to modern squirrelfish and soldierfish, although it was more basal than either, and is thought to have diverged from their common ancestor around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. It is thought to be related to Tenuicentrum, another basal holocentrid from the same formation.
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.
Coelogaster is an extinct genus of marine ray-finned fish that lived during the early Eocene. It contains a single species, C. leptostea, known from the famous Monte Bolca site of Italy.
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.
Arapaimidae is a family of freshwater ray-finned fish 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 family is sometimes treated as the subfamily Arapaiminae. A commonly used synonym is Heterotidinae, but according to the ICZN, Arapaimidae has priority.
This list of fossil fishes described in 2016 is a list of new taxa of jawless vertebrates, placoderms, acanthodians, fossil cartilaginous fishes, bony fishes and other fishes of every kind that have been described during the year 2016, as well as other significant discoveries and events related to paleontology of fishes that occurred in the year 2016. The list only includes taxa at the level of genus or species.
The Ellimmichthyiformes, also known as double-armored herrings, are an extinct order of ray-finned fish known from the Early Cretaceous to the Oligocene. They were the sister group to the extant true herrings, shad and anchovies in the order Clupeiformes, with both orders belonging to the suborder Clupeomorpha.
The Dercetidae are an extinct family of aulopiform ray-finned fish that are known from the Late Cretaceous to the early Paleocene. They are among the many members of the diverse, extinct suborder Enchodontoidei, which were dominant during the Cretaceous.
The Tenejapa-Lacandón Formation is a geological formation and lagerstätte in southern Mexico and western Guatemala. It preserves fossils dating to the Early Paleocene.
Monopteros is an extinct genus of marine bonytongue fish known from the Eocene. It contains a single species, M. gigas, known from the Early Eocene of Monte Bolca, Italy. Its genus name, Monopteros meaning "one wing", comes from its large, elongated pectoral fins. The species name, gigas, refers to its relatively large size at 448 millimetres (1.470 ft) in length.
The Sankarewang Formation is an ?Eocene-aged geological formation in Sumatra, Indonesia near Padang. It is among the very few Paleogene fossil deposits from Southeast Asia that preserves a freshwater ecosystem, and contains many of the earliest records of freshwater fish taxa that now predominate the region. Many of the fishes from this formation are well-preserved as articulated skeletons. The fossils of the formation have been known since the 1870s, although they only received significant attention during the 1930s and again starting from the mid-2010s.
