ichthyopterygium

English

Etymology

From New Latin ichthyopterygium, from Ancient Greek ἰχθύς (ikhthús, “fish”) + πτερύγιον (pterúgion, “fin”). By surface analysis, ichthyo- +‎ pterygium.

Noun

ichthyopterygium (plural ichthyopterygia)

  1. (comparative anatomy, obsolete) fish fin.
    • 1892, “On the Anatomy and Physiology of Protopterus annectens”, in The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, volume 30, pages 109–230:
      As already stated, they are used more like limbs for walking than fins for swimming, but this physiological resemblance to the limbs of the higher animals is not borne out by a morphological one; the fin is an ichthyopterygium, and shows no tendency towards modification in the direction of a cheiropterygium.
    • 1913, Robert Broom, “On the origin of the cheiropterygium”, in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, volume 32, pages 459–464:
      […] whether the tetrapod limb be derived from an ichthyopterygium like that of the shark, or an archipterygium like that of Ceratodus, or a reduced archipterygium like that of Eusthenopteron […]
    • 1923, William King Gregory, Roy Waldo Miner, and Gladwyn Kingsley Noble, “The carpus of Eryops and the structure of the primitive chiropterygium”, in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, volume 48, pages 279–288:
      The various adaptations of the ichthyopterygium to locomotion have little bearing on the question of homology.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “ichthyopterygium”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

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