ancestors, and present also in basal cartilaginous fish. Overall, the acanthodians' jaws are presumed to have evolved from the first gill arch of some ancestral jawless fishes that had a gill skeleton made of pieces of jointed cartilage.

Taxonomy and phylogeny

In a study of early jawed vertebrate relationships, Davis et al. (2012) found acanthodians to be split among the two major clades Osteichthyes

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