cladistians

Noun

cladistian (plural cladistians)

1. Any ray-finned fish of the subclass Cladistia.
   • Cladistians (bichirs) are yet another taxon whose phylogenetic position has been much debated since the nineteenth century. Cladistians share some unique skeletal characters with actinopterans (i.e., acipenseriformes and neopterygians), such as the ganoid scale structure or the acrodin cap on...2011, Fish Physiology: Primitive Fishes, page 15