and was estimated to weigh several thousand pounds. However, this considerable length, reported by John Treadwell Nichols in 1943 as originating from a Chinese language publication by C. Ping in 1931, may be the result of a translation error. The last known individual of the species, a female caught in 2003, was one of the largest recorded individuals, measured to be long, with a body mass of approximately .

Though the American paddlefish ranks among the