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Abstract

Most adult vertebrate animals have bony skeletons, with cartilage mostly restricted to joints and flexible structures. In contrast, the Chondrichthyes (sharks, batoids, and chimaeras) have endoskeletons made entirely of cartilage. Moreover, in sharks and batoids, most of the skeletal cartilage is tessellated, covered with mineralized, subperichondral blocks called tesserae. There are several other forms of cartilage found in the bodies of these fishes that likely serve distinct functional and metabolic roles. The structure and development of chimaeroid cartilage is essentially unknown.