Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The typical genus of Polypteridæ, remarkable for the number of the dorsal spines bearing rays behind. It contains the bichir.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) An African genus of ganoid fishes including the bichir.
Etymologies
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Examples
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First, he erected the fishes that to an internal cartilaginous skeleton unite an external armature of plates and points of bone, into his Placoid order; next, gathering together a mere handful of individuals from among the various orders and families over which they had been scattered, -- the sturgeons from among the cartilaginous fishes, and the lepidosteus and polypterus from among the Clupia or herrings, -- he erected into a small ganoid order all the fishes that are covered, whatever the consistency of their skeleton, by a continuous or nearly continuous armor of enamelled bone, or by great bony plates that lock into each other at their edges.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829
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