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The skeleton, which forms the support structure inside the fish, is either made of cartilage (cartilaginous fish) or bone . The main skeletal element is the vertebral column, composed of articulating vertebrae which are lightweight yet strong. The ribs attach to the spine and there are no limbs or limb girdles.
The triggerfish family, Balistidae. was first proposed in 1810 by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. [4] The closest relantives to the triggerfishes are the filefishses belonging to the family Monacanthidae and these two families are sometimes classified together in the suborder Balistoidei, for example in the 5th edition of Fishes of the World. [5]
It has a small second dorsal spine which is used to lock its main spine into an upright position. When sheltering in a small crevice, this locking helps protect the fish against extraction by a predator. The reef triggerfish is characterized by having a noticeably large snout and blue lips that resemble that of a pig’s snout.
Balistes vetula is the type species of the genus Balistes, a name which refers to the first spine of the dorsal fin being locked in place by the erection of the shorter second trigger spine, and unlocked by depressing the second spine. Balistes is taken directly from the Italian pesca ballista, the "crossbow fish".
Fish bone is any bony tissue in a fish, although in common usage the term refers specifically to delicate parts of the non-vertebral skeleton of such as ribs, fin spines and intramuscular bones. Not all fish have fish bones in this sense; for instance, eels and anglerfish do not possess bones other than the cranium and the vertebrae.
Cartilaginous fish, such as sharks and rays, have jaws and skeletons made of cartilage rather than bone. Megalodon is an extinct species of shark that lived about 28 to 1.5 Ma. It looked much like a stocky version of the great white shark , but was much larger with fossil lengths reaching 20.3 metres (67 ft). [ 10 ]
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Triggerfish also use spines to lock themselves in crevices to prevent them being pulled out. Lepidotrichia are usually composed of bone, but those of early osteichthyans - such as Cheirolepis - also had dentine and enamel. [25] They are segmented and appear as a series of disks stacked one on top of another.