
Bonytongues
Osteoglossiformes
Osteoglossiformes , meaning "bony tongues" in Ancient Greek, is a relatively primitive order of ray-finned fish that contains two sub-orders, the Osteoglossoidei and the Notopteroidei. All of at least 245 living species inhabit freshwater. They are found in South America, Africa, Australia and southern Asia, having first evolved in Gondwana before that continent broke up. In 2008, several new species of marine osteoglossiforms were described from the Danish Eocene Fur Formation, dramatically increasing the diversity of this group. This implies that the Osteoglossomorpha is not a primary freshwater fish group with the osteoglossiforms having a typical Gondwana distribution.
The Gymnarchidae (the only species being Gymnarchus niloticus, the African knifefish) and the Mormyridae are weakly electric fish able to sense their prey using electric fields.
6 branches of this order, most-observed first · about 255 known species

Arowanas
familyOsteoglossidae

Arapaimas
familyArapaimidae

Elephantfishes
familyMormyridae

Featherbacks
familyNotopteridae

Freshwater Butterflyfishes
familyPantodontidae

Abas
familyGymnarchidae
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Osteoglossiformes in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 49240.