Osteichthyes
Diverse clade of vertebrate animals
Summary
Osteichthyes, also known as osteichthyans or commonly referred to as the bony fish, is a diverse clade of vertebrate animals that have endoskeletons primarily composed of bone tissue, encompassing both the conventional bony fishes and, in a cladistic sense, all tetrapods. They can be contrasted with the Chondrichthyes and the extinct placoderms and acanthodians, which have endoskeletons primarily composed of cartilage. The vast majority of extant fish are members of Osteichthyes, being an extremely diverse and abundant group consisting of 45 orders, over 435 families and 28,000 species.
Originally created by 195.149.37.xxx
10/28/2001, 5:04:21 PM
Modified
5/15/2026, 9:35:02 AM
Recent revisions
/* Comparison with cartilaginous fishes */
/* Phylogeny */ size correction
/* Phylogeny */ correction
/* Phylogeny */ extra image for more extent clarity
Disambiguating links to [[Family (disambiguation)]] (link changed to [[Family (taxonomy)]]) using [[User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist|DisamAssist]].
Osteichthyes
Changing [[Wikipedia:Short description|short description]] from "Diverse group of vertebrates with skeletons of bone rather than cartilage" to "Diverse clade of vertebrate animals"
[[Wikipedia:OABOT|Open access bot]]: doi updated in citation with #oabot.
"scleral" is a better word than "sclerotic" (see discussion [[Scleral_ring#Terminology|here]]
/* Classification */ example instead
/* Comparison with cartilaginous fishes */ appropriate caption
/* Comparison with cartilaginous fishes */ clean widths
/* Classification */ headers
minor edit
