"Wow! A great new resource for exploring fish phylogeny and diversity." - MKO
Near 2013 Heiko Bleher but who will really of laymen understand it?

But Heiko, we don't even understand it. Take gobies for example. They're both the first and last fish to evolve. How can this be? Because "goby" isn't a line/family/breed of fishes, it's fish that have given up floating and sit on the bottom. That has happened in every piscine niche since before they were fish. Feeding habits determine shape of the body (especially the jaw) this what we call Gobiform fishes (the true Gobies with fused ventral fins and the Eleotridae that do not have fused ventrals) are just a feeding type adaptation from all sorts of otherwise unrelated fishes. The oddest one of these in my mind is Aphyosemion franzwerneri, the "Goby Killi". Ostensibly coming from a top feeding group os fishes, it's given up, lost it's swim bladder (almost) and acts like a goby and ves it's ventral fins are different and more goby like. If ou could look at it in say 20-40 million years it would be a goby for all intents and purposes, that bore an odd resementlance to killifish families. But gobies evolved early et there's one happening right now. In my opinion the chart above is like a cartoon drawing of a Ford F150 Truck. In broad strokes, it's correct. But the details? The schematic alone to the F150 comes on nine DVDs. Goby killi, A. franzwerneri.

It's a direct descendant, by DNA and osteological evidnce, from this fish, Pachypanchax playfairi.

· Reply · 1h Richard Sexton Richard Sexton Now, what came before P. Playfairi (PLA)? Well, the chart doesn't tell you that. To complicate things, PLA is one of the dino fishes, not a whole lot more evlved than a Coelacanth, comparatively. Instead of modern fish features, like fin ray support between the backbone and the tail fin rays it has a bit dinosaur like plate, one of only 3 killifish that does. This is only otherwise known from only fossils.