| The largest class of vertebrates are the Osteichthyes, bony fish. These fish have a skeleton much stiffer than the cartilaginous fish (sharks). Bony fish have excellent smell like sharks and rays, but the bony fishes also have excellent veiw. Bony Fish are also very bouyent, like when your gold fishdies and floats at the top of the tank. A organ called a swim bladder located under the skeleton is a chamber full of gas that that makes it pssible for the fish to float in the water. A bony fish is able to breathe without swimming. Other traits of these fish are paired fins, and lots of teeth. Most bony fish have thin, flexible skeletal fins. Lobe-finned fish have have fins of mucle and and suporting bones. All the lobe fined fish died out except one, the Coelacanth. |
