A fish with a skeleton made entirely of cartilage rather than bone, including sharks, rays, and skates; a member of the class Chondrichthyes.
From Greek 'chondros' (cartilage) + 'pteryx' (wing or fin). The term literally means 'cartilage-finned' and was developed to classify fish by their skeletal composition rather than appearance.
Sharks are actually chondropterygians, meaning they're more ancient in their body design than bony fish—their all-cartilage skeleton is not 'primitive' but rather an incredibly successful evolutionary adaptation that's lasted 450 million years.
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