Agnatha

See also: agnatha

Translingual
Hagfishes have spinal columns and skulls like the gnathostomes, but are jawless, with rounded mouthparts, adapted to rasping and sucking

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-, “without”) + γνάθος (gnáthos, “jaw”).

Proper noun

Agnatha

  1. The jawless fishes, or agnathans; they have backbones and skulls like the scaly fishes, and like reptiles, mammals and other vertebrates on land, but they do not have paired jaws like humans or sharks; instead their mouthparts are round; they suck onto their prey or food and rasp away bits that they then swallow.
    1. A taxonomic superclass within the subphylum Vertebrata.
      • 1889, Edward Drinker Cope, “Synopsis of the Families of Vertebrata”, in The American Naturalist, volume 23 (in English), page 852:
        The known members of the class Agnatha are a very small representation of those that once existed; and they present a great variety of character, having little affinity with each other.
      • 2007, Chad Thomas et al., Freshwater Fishes of Texas (in English), Texas A&M University Press, page 6:
        Current classification schemes have living fishes assigned to two superclasses (Agnatha, or jawless chordates, and Gnathostomata, or jawed chordates)[…].
    2. A taxonomic infraphylum within the subphylum Vertebrata.[1]

Hypernyms

Hyponyms

Coordinate terms

Descendants

See also
  • Ostracodermi

References
  1. Ruggiero MA, Gordon DP, Orrell TM, Bailly N, Bourgoin T, Brusca RC, et al. (2015) A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0119248. PMID 25923521, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0119248
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