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EveryFish

Ganoid scales

Thick, diamond-shaped scales with a glassy coat called ganoine, worn as armour by gars and bichirs.

Also: ganoine

Ganoid scales are heavy, rhombus-shaped plates that fit edge to edge rather than overlapping loosely. They are coated in ganoine, a hard, shiny, enamel-like layer. Gars and bichirs wear them as a near-solid armour, and sturgeons carry related bony plates called scutes along the body. Many extinct early ray-finned fish had them too, which is one reason gars and bichirs are often called ancient fish. Indigenous peoples of the Americas used gar scales as arrowheads.

See also

Scales Living fossil Ray-finned fish

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