''Lycopteridae'' is an extinct family of

freshwater Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does include ...

osteoglossomorph Osteoglossomorpha is a group of bony fish in the Teleostei. Notable members A notable member is the arapaima (''Arapaima gigas''), the largest freshwater fish in South America and one of the largest bony fishes alive. Other notable members inclu ...

ray-finned fishes Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fishes, is a class of bony fish. They comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. The ray-finned fishes are so called because their fins are webs of skin supported by bony or h ...

Genera

* ''

Lycoptera ''Lycoptera'' is an extinct genus of fish that lived from the late Jurassic to Cretaceous periods in present-day China, North Korea, Mongolia and Siberia. It is known from abundant fossils representing sixteen species, which serve as important ind ...

'' Müller, 1848 * ''

Aokiichthys ''Aokiichthys'' is an extinct genus of basal osteoglossoid from an Early Cretaceous freshwater palaeolake of what is now Kyushu, Japan. The genus formed a species radiation in the First Formation within the Wakino Subgroup of the Kwanmon Gro ...

'' Yabumoto 1994 * '' Changichthys'' Su 1991 * '' Yungkangichthys'' Chang and Chou 1974

Description

These ray-finned fishes were small, often only a finger's length, with small, almost circular scales.

Distribution

They occurred in East Asian rivers and lakes from the

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

. Fossils of these fishes have been found in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

References

* Arno Hermann Müller: ''Lehrbuch der Paläozoologie. Band III, Vertebraten, Teil 1.'' Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1985 *

Joseph S. Nelson Joseph (Joe) Schieser Nelson (April 12, 1937 – August 9, 2011) was an American ichthyologist. He is best known for the book '' Fishes of the World'' (1st edition 1976, 4th edition 2006), which is the standard reference in fish systematics and e ...

: ''

Fishes of the World ''Fishes of the World'' by the American ichthyologist Joseph S. Nelson (1937–2011) is a standard reference for fish systematics. Now in its fifth edition (2016), the work is a comprehensive overview of the diversity and classification of the ...

''. John Wiley & Sons, 2006, * V.N. Yakovle
Systematics of the family Lycopteridae
International Geology Review - Volume 8, Issue 1, 1966

External links

* *
The Paleobiology Database

Prehistoric ray-finned fish families Jurassic bony fish Cretaceous bony fish Freshwater fish Jurassic first appearances Cretaceous extinctions Osteoglossomorpha {{paleo-rayfinned-fish-stub