American paddlefish
The American paddlefish is a species of basal ray-finned fish closely related to sturgeons in the order Acipenseriformes. It is the only living species in the paddlefish family, Polyodontidae. Paddlefish are native to the Mississippi River basin and once moved freely under the relatively natural, unaltered conditions that existed prior to the early 1900s. They are currently found in twenty-two states in the U.S. and those populations are protected under state, federal and international laws.
About American paddlefish in brief
The American paddlefish is a species of basal ray-finned fish closely related to sturgeons in the order Acipenseriformes. Fossil records of paddlefish date back over 125 million years to the Early Cretaceous. It is the only living species in the paddlefish family, Polyodontidae. The other recently-surviving member of this lineage is the possibly now extinct Chinese paddlefish endemic to the Yangtze River basin in China. Paddlefish are native to the Mississippi River basin and once moved freely under the relatively natural, unaltered conditions that existed prior to the early 1900s. They are currently found in twenty-two states in the U.S. and those populations are protected under state, federal and international laws. American paddle fish populations have declined dramatically primarily because of overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. Poaching has also been a contributing factor to their decline and will continue to be as long as the demand for caviar remains strong. Their rostrum and cranium are covered with tens of thousands of sensory receptors for locating swarms of zooplankton, which is their primary food source. Their peripheral range extended into the Great Lakes, with occurrences in Lake Huron and Lake Helen in Canada until about 90 years ago. In 1797, French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède established the genus Polyodon for paddlefish, which today includes a single extant species, Polyodon spathula. The species is often referred to as a primitive fish or a relict species because it retains some morphological characteristics of its early ancestors, including a skeleton that is almost entirely cartilaginous and a paddle-shaped roStrum that extends nearly one-third their body length.
Some of their primitive characteristics include a skeleton composed of cartilage and a deeplyked heterocercal tail or caudal fin similar to that of sharks, although they are not related to that species. They date back to 75 million years ago, 70 million years ago in the Upper Cretacaceous, 70 to 75 million years old. The current range of American paddleFish has been reduced to the Mississippi and Missouri River tributaries and Mobile Bay drainage basin. The family Polyontidae comprises three extinct species from western North America, one recently extinct species, and one species, the American paddle Fish, from the Mississippi Basin in the United States, and five described species from China. It also includes one extant species from the American River River and one from the Red River River in the Redwood Forest in northern California. The genus Polydon feuille was established in 1772 by taxonomist Johann Julius Walbaum who described paddlefish as Squalus spathulas. As a result of LacéPède’s inadvertent double naming,Polyodon spATHula became the preferred scientific name of American paddies. The name Polyodon became the synonym as one of two names applied to the group.
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This page is based on the article American paddlefish published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
