Fish Fossils
for Sale

Fossil Mall maintains an extensive offering of fish fossils for sale, including many rare and exotic specimens. Visit these fossil shops currently stocking

Fish Fossils for Sale:

EDCOPE Enterprises Fish Fossils I EDCOPE Enterprises Green River Fish Fossils I Pangaea Fossils

Some of the finest fossil fish in the world come from the Cretaceous Lagerstatt in Lebanon. See a broad selection of these Lebanon Fossil Fish at EDCOPE Enterprises.

Subclass Pteraspidomorphi (early jawless fish)
    Class Thelodonti
    Class Anaspida
    (unranked) Cephalaspidomorphi (early jawless fish)
          (unranked) Hyperoartia
                Petromyzontidae (lampreys)
          Class Galeaspida
          Class Pituriaspida
          Class Osteostraci (bony armored jawless fis)
    Infraphylum Gnathostomata (jawed vertebrates)
          Class Placodermi (extinct)
          Class Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish)
          Class Acanthodii (spiny sharks. extinct)
          Superclass Osteichthyes (bony fish)
                Class Actinopterygii (ray-finned fish)
                Class Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish)
                      Subclass Coelacanthimorpha (coelacanths)
                      Subclass Dipnoi (lungfish)

Fish comprise a paraphyletic group taxa (containing taxa that are descended from a common ancestor, but not including all taxa descended from the common ancestor), including hagfishes, lampreys, sharks and rays, ray-finned fishes, coelacanths, and lungfishes. More formally, fishes are any non-tetrapod chordates. One widely accepted taxonomy is shown to the right, and some brief descriptions are given below for major groups from which fossils are known.

The Agnatha are the jawless fish, and the extant varieties are the last survivors of the world's first vertebrate animals. The jawless fish diverged from other fish during the Cambrian some 500 million years ago, and lack scales, paired fins, and jaws. They instead have a circular toothed outgrowth used to latch on to the side of another fish in order to feed on its blood. Agnatha were prominent among primitive fishes of the early Paleozoic. Haikouichthys and Myllokunmingia are notable agnathans from the Chengjiang biota of China. Another putative agnathid from Chengjiang is Haikouella. The Agnatha larvae are filter feeders, a characteristic that betrays their evolutionary kinship with invertebrate chordates. Many Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian agnathans were heavily armored with bony, spiked plates. The Ostracoderms were the first armored agnathans, ancesctors of the bony fish and thus to tetrapods, including humans, beings) that are are known from the middle Ordovician. Agnathans never recovered from a decline during the Devonian.

The Chondrichthyes are the cartilaginous fish having flexible skeleton of cartilage rather than bone. They evolved some 100 million years after the jawless fish and the sharks, skates, and rays. They have jaws, teeth and scales, and are, in general, effective predators. The teeth of carnivorous sharks are not attached to the jaw, but instead are embedded in the flesh. Shark teeth of many species are constantly replaced and some sharks can lose 30,000 teeth over their lifetime, which is why shark teeth fossils are so abundant. In contrast, cartilagage poorly fossilizes, making the cartilaginous fish fossils relatively uncommon.

The Osteichthyes are the bony fish that evolved in conjunction with the cartilaginous fish that are by far the largest group of fishes, have paired fins, dermal scales, numerous vertebrae, and often many teeth. The bony fish (Osteichthyes) can, in turn, be divided into two categories, the lobe-finned fish and the ray-finned fish. Lobe-finned fish have muscular fins supported by bones. The lone surviving lobe-finned fish is the coelacanth. Science believes that terrestrial animals evolved from lobe-finned, rather than ray-finned fish. Ray-finned fish comprise all other fish with a flexible skeleton made of bone. Osteichthyes are the largest group of vertebrates comprising some 29,000 extand species.