Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 24, 2014

The American paddlefish is one of the largest freshwater fish in North America. Closely related to the sturgeon, it is one of only two extant taxa in the paddlefish family (the other being the Chinese paddlefish). Fossil records of paddlefish date back over 300 million years, nearly 50 million years before dinosaurs appeared. The American paddlefish is referred to as a relict species (because it retains some morphological characteristics of its early ancestors) even though it is highly derived with evolutionary adaptations specifically for filter feeding. The rostrum and cranium of American paddlefish are covered with tens of thousands of sensory receptors for locating swarms of zooplankton, their primary food source. American paddlefish are native to the Mississippi River Basin and once moved freely under the relatively natural, unaltered conditions that existed prior to the early 1900s. Their numbers have declined dramatically primarily because of overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. They are currently found in only twenty-two U.S. states, and their range has been reduced to the Mississippi and Missouri river tributaries and Mobile Bay drainage basin. (Full article...)

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