Cartilaginous fishes facts for kids

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Quick facts for kids Cartilaginous fish Temporal range: Lower Silurian – Recent

Great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Subphylum:	Vertebrata
Infraphylum:	Gnathostomata
Class:	Chondrichthyes Huxley, 1880

Chondrichthyes or cartilaginous fishes are jawed fish with paired fins, paired nostrils, scales, two-chambered hearts, and skeletons made of cartilage rather than bone. They are divided into two subclasses: Elasmobranchii (sharks, rays and skates) and Holocephali (chimaera, sometimes called ghost sharks).

Classification
Evolution
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Classification

The class Chondrichthyes has two subclasses: the subclass Elasmobranchii (sharks, rays, skates, and sawfish) and the subclass Holocephali (chimaeras). To see the full list of the species, click here.

Subclasses of cartilaginous fishes
Elasmobranchii	Sharks and rays, skates, and sawfish	Elasmobranchii is a subclass that includes the sharks and the rays and skates. Members of the elasmobranchii have no swim bladders, five to seven pairs of gill clefts opening individually to the exterior, rigid dorsal fins, and small placoid scales. The teeth are in several series; the upper jaw is not fused to the cranium, and the lower jaw is articulated with the upper. The eyes have a tapetum lucidum. The inner margin of each pelvic fin in the male fish is grooved to constitute a clasper for the transmission of sperm. These fish are widely distributed in tropical and temperate waters.
Holocephali	Chimaeras	Holocephali (complete-heads) is a subclass of which the order Chimaeriformes is the only surviving group. This group includes the rat fishes (e.g., Chimaera), rabbit-fishes (e.g., Hydrolagus) and elephant-fishes (Callorhynchus). Today, they preserve some features of elasmobranch life in Paleaozoic times, though in other respects they are aberrant. They live close to the bottom and feed on molluscs and other invertebrates. The tail is long and thin and they move by sweeping movements of the large pectoral fins. There is an erectile spine in front of the dorsal fin, sometimes poisonous. There is no stomach (that is, the gut is simplified and the 'stomach' is merged with the intestine), and the mouth is a small aperture surrounded by lips, giving the head a parrot-like appearance. The fossil record of the Holocephali starts in the Devonian period. The record is extensive, but most fossils are teeth, and the body forms of numerous species are not known, or at best poorly understood.

Extant orders of cartilaginous fishes
Group	Order	Image	Common name	Authority	Families	Genera	Species				Note
Group	Order	Image	Common name	Authority	Families	Genera	Total				Note
Galean sharks	Carcharhiniformes		ground sharks	Compagno, 1977	8	51	>270	7	10	21
	Heterodontiformes		bullhead sharks	L. S. Berg, 1940	1	1	9
	Lamniformes		mackerel sharks	L. S. Berg, 1958	7 +2 extinct	10	16			10
	Orectolobiformes		carpet sharks	Applegate, 1972	7	13	43			7
Squalomorph sharks	Hexanchiformes		frilled and cow sharks	de Buen, 1926	2 +3 extinct	4 +11 extinct	6 +33 extinct
	Pristiophoriformes		sawsharks	L. S. Berg, 1958	1	2	6
	Squaliformes		dogfish sharks		1	2	29	1		6
	Squatiniformes		angel sharks	Buen, 1926	1	1	23	3	4	5
Rays	Myliobatiformes		stingrays and relatives	Compagno, 1973	10	29	223	1	16	33
	Pristiformes		sawfishes		1	2	5-7	5-7
	Rajiformes		skates and guitarfishes	L. S. Berg, 1940	5	36	>270	4	12	26
	Torpediniformes		electric rays	de Buen, 1926	2	12	69	2		9
Holocephali	Chimaeriformes		chimaera	Obruchev, 1953	3 +2 extinct	6 +3 extinct	39 +17 extinct

Evolution

Devonian	Devonian (419–359 mya)
Devonian		Cladoselache	Cladoselache was the first abundant genus of primitive shark, appearing about 370 Ma. It grew to 6 feet (1.8 m) long, with anatomical features similar to modern mackerel sharks. It had a streamlined body almost entirely devoid of scales, with five to seven gill slits and a short, rounded snout that had a terminal mouth opening at the front of the skull. It had a very weak jaw joint compared with modern-day sharks, but it compensated for that with very strong jaw-closing muscles. Its teeth were multi-cusped and smooth-edged, making them suitable for grasping, but not tearing or chewing. Cladoselache therefore probably seized prey by the tail and swallowed it whole. It had powerful keels that extended onto the side of the tail stalk and a semi-lunate tail fin, with the superior lobe about the same size as the inferior. This combination helped with its speed and agility which was useful when trying to outswim its probable predator, the heavily armoured 10 metres (33 ft) long placoderm fish Dunkleosteus.
Carbon- iferous	Carboniferous (359–299 Ma): Sharks underwent a major evolutionary radiation during the Carboniferous. It is believed that this evolutionary radiation occurred because the decline of the placoderms at the end of the Devonian period caused many environmental niches to become unoccupied and allowed new organisms to evolve and fill these niches.
		Orthacanthus senckenbergianus	The first 15 million years of the Carboniferous has very few terrestrial fossils. This gap in the fossil record, is called Romer's gap after the American palaentologist Alfred Romer. While it has long been debated whether the gap is a result of fossilisation or relates to an actual event, recent work indicates that the gap period saw a drop in atmospheric oxygen levels, indicating some sort of ecological collapse. The gap saw the demise of the Devonian fish-like ichthyostegalian labyrinthodonts, and the rise of the more advanced temnospondyl and reptiliomorphan amphibians that so typify the Carboniferous terrestrial vertebrate fauna. The Carboniferous seas were inhabited by many fish, mainly Elasmobranchs (sharks and their relatives). These included some, like Psammodus, with crushing pavement-like teeth adapted for grinding the shells of brachiopods, crustaceans, and other marine organisms. Other sharks had piercing teeth, such as the Symmoriida; some, the petalodonts, had peculiar cycloid cutting teeth. Most of the sharks were marine, but the Xenacanthida invaded fresh waters of the coal swamps. Among the bony fish, the Palaeonisciformes found in coastal waters also appear to have migrated to rivers. Sarcopterygian fish were also prominent, and one group, the Rhizodonts, reached very large size. Most species of Carboniferous marine fish have been described largely from teeth, fin spines and dermal ossicles, with smaller freshwater fish preserved whole. Freshwater fish were abundant, and include the genera Ctenodus, Uronemus, Acanthodes, Cheirodus, and Gyracanthus.
		Stethacanthidae	As a result of the evolutionary radiation, carboniferous sharks assumed a wide variety of bizarre shapes; e.g., sharks belonging to the family Stethacanthidae possessed a flat brush-like dorsal fin with a patch of denticles on its top. Stethacanthus' unusual fin may have been used in mating rituals. Apart from the fins, Stethacanthidae resembled Falcatus (below).
		Falcatus	Falcatus is a genus of small cladodont-toothed sharks which lived 335–318 Ma. They were about 25–30 cm (9.8–11.8 in) long. They are characterised by the prominent fin spines that curved anteriorly over their heads.
		Orodus	Orodus is another shark of the Carboniferous, a genus from the family Orodontidae that lived into the early Permian from 303 to 295 Ma. It grew to 2 m (6.6 ft) in length.
Permian	Permian (298–252 Ma): The Permian ended with the most extensive extinction event recorded in paleontology: the Permian-Triassic extinction event. 90% to 95% of marine species became extinct, as well as 70% of all land organisms. Recovery from the Permian-Triassic extinction event was protracted; land ecosystems took 30M years to recover, and marine ecosystems took even longer.
Triassic	Triassic (252–201 Ma): The fish fauna of the Triassic was remarkably uniform, reflecting the fact that very few families survived the Permian extinction. In turn, the Triassic ended with the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event. About 23% of all families, 48% of all genera (20% of marine families and 55% of marine genera) and 70% to 75% of all species became extinct.
Jurassic	Jurassic (201–145 Ma): The end of the Cretaceous was marked by the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (K-Pg extinction). There are substantial fossil records of jawed fishes across the K–T boundary, which provides good evidence of extinction patterns of these classes of marine vertebrates. Within cartilaginous fish, approximately 80% of the sharks, rays, and skates families survived the extinction event, and more than 90% of teleost fish (bony fish) families survived.
Cretaceous	Cretaceous (145–66 Ma):
		Squalicorax falcatus	Squalicorax falcatus is a lamnoid shark from the Cretaceous
		Ptychodus	Ptychodus is a genus of extinct hybodontiform shark which lived from the late Cretaceous to the Paleogene. Ptychodus mortoni (pictured) was about 32 feet (9.8 meters) long and was unearthed in Kansas, United States.
Cenozoic Era	Cenozoic Era (65 Ma to present): The current era has seen great diversification of bony fishes.
Cenozoic Era		Megalodon	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). Found in all oceans it was one of the largest and most powerful predators in vertebrate history, and probably had a profound impact on marine life.

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Radiation of cartilaginous fishes, based on Michael Benton, 2005.

Cartilaginous fishes facts for kids

Contents

Classification

Evolution

Images for kids

See also