Thousands of fish species with certain characteristics live on Earth. But which of the fish are considered the oldest? And which of them did the man manage to catch?

The oldest fish

This type can be attributed several types of fish, which appeared a very long time ago and still exist.

It is believed that the first fish were cartilaginous, namely: chimera, shark and stingray. They appeared on Earth in the period from 450 to 420 million years ago, and since then they managed to split into subspecies and seriously change in the process of evolution.

Interesting fact: the first sharks were significantly different from current representatives. The ancestors of modern individuals appeared only 300 million years ago.

Bone fish appeared about 400 million years ago and were divided into bivalves and cysteras. Of the latter, only coelacanth survived to the present - a fish with a blue color and fins of a brush-like structure, lives in the Indian Ocean.

Breathing fish are able to breathe not only under water, but also in the air. Currently, six species with a universal respiratory system live in South America, Africa and Australia. Of the most prominent representatives, one can distinguish a horned tooth, protopter and flake.

The oldest fish caught by man

The oldest fish was caught in 1938 in the Chalumna River, which flows into the Indian Ocean. The fishermen could not understand what kind of creature fell into their hands. The biologist who arrived at the site found that the fish is a representative of the cicopterous, which were considered extinct.They called her "coelacanth." The second meeting with the representatives of the brushworms of humanity took place only 16 years later. Now this fish is periodically caught by divers in East Africa, so it is no longer considered extinct.

Also in the second half of the 20th century, people on the territory of Africa caught coelacanths, the oldest representatives of the cicopterous. They can be easily distinguished from ordinary fish by the structure of six fins, which are an underdeveloped form of the vertebral limbs.

The most ancient cartilaginous fish that live to this day are stingrays, sharks and chimeras, which appeared about 450 million years ago. Of the brushworms, the coelacanths that have lived on Earth for 400 million years have survived.