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The vertebrates include mammals, birds, amphibians, and various classes of fish and reptiles. The fish include the jawless Agnatha, and the jawed Gnathostomata. The jawed fish include both the cartilaginous fish and the bony fish. Bony fish include the lobe-finned fish, which gave rise to the tetrapods, the animals with four
Class Placodermi (armoured fish) † Class Acanthodii ("spiny sharks", sometimes classified under Actinopterygii) † Superclass Osteichthyes (bony fish) Class Actinopterygii (ray finned fishes) Clade Sarcopterygii (lobe finned fishes, ancestors of tetrapods) The above scheme is the one most commonly encountered in non-specialist and general works.
The properties defining the sarcopterygians are in contrast to the other group of bony fish, the Actinopterygii, which have ray-fins made of bony rods, called lepidotrichia. These two bony fish groups were classified together as Osteichthyes at one time, the whole combined group was seen as parallel to the tetrapods (mammals, birds, reptiles ...
Actinopterygii, members of which are known as ray-finned fishes, is a class or subclass of the bony fishes. The ray-finned fishes are so called because they possess lepidotrichia or "fin rays", their fins being webs of skin supported by bony or horny spines ("rays"), as opposed to the fleshy, lobed fins that characterize the class Sarcopterygii ...
Osteichthyes (bone-fish) or bony fishes are a taxonomic group of fish that have bone, as opposed to cartilaginous skeletons. The vast majority of fish are osteichthyans, which is an extremely diverse and abundant group consisting of 45 orders, with over 435 families and 28,000 species. [21] It is the largest class of vertebrates in existence today.
Avialae is also occasionally defined as an apomorphy-based clade (that is, one based on physical characteristics). Jacques Gauthier, who named Avialae in 1986, re-defined it in 2001 as all dinosaurs that possessed feathered wings used in flapping flight, and the birds that descended from them. [12] [18]
The osprey (/ ˈ ɒ s p r i,-p r eɪ /; [2] Pandion haliaetus), historically known as sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor , reaching more than 60 cm (24 in) in length and 180 cm (71 in) across the wings.
Kingfishers feed on a wide variety of prey. They are most famous for hunting and eating fish, and some species do specialise in catching fish, but other species take crustaceans, frogs and other amphibians, annelid worms, molluscs, insects, spiders, centipedes, reptiles (including snakes), and even birds and mammals. Individual species may ...