What are Fishes? The fishes include all the vertebrates that are not tetrapods.

Most fishes have an elongate body, fins in different arrangements, and some type of body covering like scales or bony plates. Most breathe by means of gills, and all but the agnathans have jaws. All have skeletons composed of bone, except for the sharks and their relatives, whose skeletons are cartilaginous. Fishes have been around since the Cambrian, and different forms have been very diverse throughout the Phanerozoic. What are Amphibians? Amphibians spend part of their life cycle in water and part on land, hence their name: amphibios comes from Greek and means double life. The larval stage is always spent in the water, and most larvae metamorphose into adult forms to live on land. Frogs, toads, salamanders, and newts are common modern amphibians. Fossil forms, for example the bizarre horned nectrideans, are less familiar. The evolutionary relationships of amphibians have not been completely determined, in part because there is a large gap between the fossil record of the extinct relatives (Carboniferous to Permian) and the modern amphibians (Jurassic to Quaternary).