The evolution of fish began about 530 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion. It was during this time that the early chordates developed the skull and the vertebral column, leading to the first craniates and vertebrates. The first fish lineages belong to the Agnatha, or jawless fish. Early examples include Haikouichthys. FossilFish.com, the Internet's premier website for acquiring fish fossils, has been open for business on the Internet since 1999.FossilFish.com is a division of EXTINCTIONS Inc., a company dedicated to supplying fossils and related products to museums and collectors around the world.

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Fish comprise a paraphyletic group (containing taxa that are descended from a common ancestor, but not including all taxa descended from the common ancestor), including hagfishes, lampreys, sharks and rays, ray-finned fishes, coelacanths, and lungfishes. More formally, fishes are any non-tetrapod chordates. One widely accepted taxonomy is shown to the right, and some brief descriptions are given below for major groups from which fossils are known.

The Agnatha are the jawless fish, and the extant varieties are the last survivors of the world's first vertebrate animals. Jawless fishes diverged from other fish during the Cambrian some 500 million years ago, and lack scales, paired fins, and jaws. They instead have a circular toothed outgrowth used to latch on to the side of another fish in order to feed on its blood. Agnatha were prominent among primitive fishes of the early Paleozoic. Haikouichthys and Myllokunmingia are notable agnathans from the Chengjiang biota of China. Another putative agnathid from Chengjiang is Haikouella. The Agnatha larvae are filter feeders, a characteristic that betrays their evolutionary kinship with invertebrate chordates. Many Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian agnathans were heavily armored with bony, spiked plates. The Ostracoderms were the first armored agnathans, ancesctors of the bony fishes and thus to tetrapods, including humans, beings) that are are known from the middle Ordovician. Agnathans never recovered from a decline during the Devonian.

The Chondrichthyes are the cartilaginous fish having flexible skeleton of cartilage rather than bone. They evolved some 100 million years after the jawless fishes and the sharks, skates, and rays. They have jaws, teeth and scales, and are, in general, effective predators. The teeth of carnivorous sharks are not attached to the jaw, but instead are embedded in the flesh. Shark teeth of many species are constantly replaced and some sharks can lose 30,000 teeth over their lifetime, which is why shark teeth fossils are so abundant. In contrast, cartilagage poorly fossilizes, making the cartilaginous fish fossils relatively uncommon.

The Osteichthyes are the bony fishes that evolved in conjunction with the cartilaginous fish that are by far the largest group of fishes, have paired fins, dermal scales, numerous vertebrae, and often many teeth. The bony fish (Osteichthyes) can, in turn, be divided into two categories, the lobe-finned fish and the ray-finned fishes. Lobe-finned fishes have muscular fins supported by bones. The lone surviving lobe-finned fishes is the coelacanth. Science believes that terrestrial animals evolved from lobe-finned, rather than ray-finned fishes. Ray-finned fish comprise all other fish with a flexible skeleton made of bone. Osteichthyes are the largest group of vertebrates comprising some 29,000 extant species.

Fossil Fish are very common in both fresh and salt water fossil deposits in Florida. Two basic types are found here, the Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fishes; rays, skates and sharks) and Actinopterygii (bony fishes). The fossil record for these two groups goes back to the Paleozoic Era, but begins in Florida during the Eocene Period. By the Eocene Period, both groups are well evolved.

The cartilaginous fishes backbones do not fossilize as well as the harder Bony Fishes backbones do. Therefore, it is rare to find any back bone material of a shark, skate or ray, and more commonly you find fossil teeth.

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The bony fishes of Florida cover a wide variety of niches, including fresh, brackish and salt water. Identifying these different types of fish lends itself to key indicators of past paleo-environments.

The most abundant ones that are found in Florida are the common variety of fish, sharks and rays that live in the environments close to shore.

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