cartilaginous fish

American

[kahr-tuhl-aj-uh-nuhs fish] / ˌkɑr təlˈædʒ ə nəs ˈfɪʃ /

noun

Zoology. any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, characterized by having jaws and a skeleton of cartilage rather than bone, the members of which include the sharks, skates, rays, and chimaeras.

cartilaginous fish British

noun

any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, including the sharks, skates, and rays, having a skeleton composed entirely of cartilage

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

cartilaginous fish Scientific

/ kär′tl-ăj′ə-nəs /

Any of various fishes of the class Selachii (or Chondrichthyes), having a skeleton that is made of cartilage. Cartilaginous fishes breathe through gill slits, of which there are usually five, and their toothlike or platelike scales (called denticles) are made of dentine and enamel. Sharks, rays, skates, sawfish, and chimaeras are cartilaginous fishes.
Compare bony fish jawless fish

Example Sentences

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See Examples For:

cartilaginous fish

Twelve out of seventeen cartilaginous fish genomes studied contained genes for the taste receptors type 2, with only one T2R gene present in each species.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 13, 2023

Yet sharks and other cartilaginous fish do have smell receptors closely related to bitter taste receptors.

From Science Magazine ● Nov. 12, 2023

One paper describes a collection of spines, scales and head-plates from an animal named Fanjingshania renovata, all of them dead-ringers for later examples of cartilaginous fish.

From New York Times ● Sep. 28, 2022

Rays are close evolutionary relatives of sharks, sharing the taxonomical subclass Elasmobranchii, a group of cartilaginous fish that can be traced back hundreds of millions of years.

From Slate ● Sep. 1, 2022

A cartilaginous fish allied to the rays, furnished with electrical organs, by means of which it is able to give powerful shocks.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Sir Edward Belcher

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023