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Cartilaginous fish, such as sharks, do not have any of the bones found in the lower jaw of other vertebrates. Instead, their lower jaw is composed of a cartilaginous structure homologous with the Meckel's cartilage of other groups.
Chondrichthyes (/ k ɒ n ˈ d r ɪ k θ i iː z /; from Ancient Greek χόνδρος (khóndros) 'cartilage' and ἰχθύς (ikhthús) 'fish') is a class of jawed fish that contains the cartilaginous fish or chondrichthyans, which all have skeletons primarily composed of cartilage.
The following is the full list of the extant species in Class Chondrichthyes, or the cartilaginous fish. Members of this class have a backbone, gills, no swim bladder, jaws, and a skeleton made of cartilage, a soft, strong material as a replacement for bone.
[5] [6] The cartilaginous skull is holostylic, meaning that the palatoquadrate (upper jaw cartilage) is completely fused to the neurocranium (cranial cartilage). This contrasts with modern sharks, where the palatoquadrate is movable and detachable, a trait known as hyostyly. The back of the head is supported by a complex of fused vertebrae ...
Bony fish (osteichthyans, mostly teleost ray-finned fish) have four pairs of arches, cartilaginous fish (chondrichthyans) have five to seven pairs, and the more basal jawless fish ("agnathans") have up to seven. The Cambrian ancestors of vertebrates no doubt had more gill arches, as some of their chordate relatives have more than 50 pairs of ...
Researchers on Wednesday described the earliest-known vertebrates that possessed jaws as revealed by fossils of four remarkable fish species unearthed in China, two dating from 436 million years ...
The jaws have euhyostylic type suspension, which relies completely on the hyomandibular cartilages for support. [5] Bottom-dwelling batoids breathe by taking water in through the spiracles, rather than through the mouth as most fish do, and passing it outward through the gills.
Distinctively, these fish have no jaws. [15] Cartilaginous fish such as sharks also have simple, and presumably primitive, skull structures. The cranium is a single structure forming a case around the brain, enclosing the lower surface and the sides, but always at least partially open at the top as a large fontanelle.