3 comments

  1. Fatecious shark geek · August 1, 2011

    Ratfishes are not elasmobrachs either… just sayin’…

    • Southern Fried Scientist · August 1, 2011

      Ratty just feels left out. Why do y’all always have to exclude him during the holidays?!

    • Southern Fried Scientist · August 1, 2011

      But seriously, strict taxonomy at higher levels is really messy and groups like Holocephali (the sub-class containing Chimeras) is essentially a catch-all taxon that isn’t well supported. I’ve seen plenty of gene trees that support Elasmos and Holos as a single subclass (there’s less diversity between them than there is within other chordate subclasses).

      This paper has some nice trees that illustrate that: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.21293/pdf

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