Family: PARAZENIDAE, Slender Dories, Slender Dory, Smooth Dories

FAMILY PARAZENIDAE

SLENDER DORIES, SMOOTH DORIES

Small to moderate sized fishes (to 90 cm); body oval, deep or slender; head and body greatly compressed; head bones thin and soft; mouth large, oblique, upper jaw extremely protrusible, top jaw bone widely expanded at rear; jaws with a few minute conical teeth; dorsal fin VI-VIII, 24-30, with a deep notch, a weakly developed locking mechanism between first 2 spines in some genera; anal fin I-III, 27-33, the spine sometimes minute and fused to the main skeleton; pectoral fin 11-15, much shorter than head or pelvic fins; pelvics 0, 7-10, origin ranges from before to behind pectoral origin; tail fin concave to rounded; scales minute, smooth to spiny; dorsal and anal fins either with no scales along their bases or with a bony ridge along each side of base; lower midline from pelvics to anus sometimes with large spiny bucklers.

A cosmopolitan family with 3 genera and 3 species; 1 Atlantic and Indo-W Pacific species in our area.

PREPARED BY D ROSS ROBERTSON, AFTER HEEMSTRA (2002)