=Sharks.= Of all groups of living fishes the sharks are the oldest and still retain most fully the embryonic characters of their Paleozoic ancestors. Such characters are the cartilaginous skeleton, and the separate gill slits with which the throat wall is pierced and which are arranged in line like the gill openings of the lamprey. The sharks of the Silurian and Devonian are known to us chiefly by their teeth and fin spines, for they were unprotected by scales or plates, and were devoid of a bony skeleton. Figure 299 is a restoration of an archaic shark from a somewhat higher horizon. Note the seven gill slits and the lappetlike paired fins. These fins seem to be remnants of the continuous fold of skin which, as embryology teaches, passed from fore to aft down each side of the primitive vertebrate. Devonian sharks were comparatively small. They had not evolved into the ferocious monsters which were later to be masters of the seas. [Illustration: Fig. 300. A Devonian Dipnoan] =Dipnoans, or lung fishes.= These are represented to-day by a few peculiar fishes and are distinguished by some high structures which ally them with amphibians. An air sac with cellular spaces is connected with the gullet and serves as a rudimentary lung. It corresponds with the swim bladder of most modern fishes, and appears to have had a common origin with it. We may conceive that the primordial fishes not only had gills used in breathing air dissolved in water, but also developed a saclike pouch off the gullet. This sac evolved along two distinct lines. On the line of the ancestry of most modern fishes its duct was closed and it became the swim bladder used in flotation and balancing. On another line of descent it was left open, air was swallowed into it, and it developed into the rudimentary lung of the dipnoans and into the more perfect lungs of the amphibians and other air-breathing vertebrates. One of the ancient dipnoans is illustrated in Figure 300. Some of the members of this order were, like the ostracoderms, cased in armor, but their higher rank is shown by their powerful jaws and by other structures. Some of these armored fishes reached twenty-five feet in length and six feet across the head. They were the tyrants of the Devonian seas. [Illustration: Fig. 301. A Devonian Fringe-Finned Ganoid] =Ganoids.= These take their name from their enameled plates or scales of bone. The few genera now surviving are the descendants of the tribes which swarmed in the Devonian seas. A restoration of one of a leading order, the _fringe-finned_ ganoids, is given in Figure 301. The side fins, which correspond to the limbs of the higher vertebrates, are quite unlike those of most modern fishes. Their rays, instead of radiating from a common base, fringe a central lobe which contains a cartilaginous axis. The teeth of the Devonian ganoids show a complicated folded structure.