“…The order also includes the extinct families †Peipiaosteidae (Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, Asia; see Hilton et al, 2021) and †Chondrosteidae (Jurassic, Europe; see Hilton and Forey, 2009) (Grande and Bemis, 1996; Bemis et al, 1997; Hilton and Grande, 2021). Acipenseriformes has been interpreted as the closest extant sister group of the Neopterygii (i.e., gars, bowfins, and teleosts; e.g., Patterson, 1982, Giles et al, 2017, Hughes et al, 2018; see also Grande and Bemis, 1998 and Grande, 2010), with recent phylogenetic analyses reexamining this question (e.g., Argyriou et al, 2018, 2022). Regardless of their exact phylogenetic position at the base of Actinopterygii, this order remains the most taxonomically rich clade of extant actinopterygian fishes outside of Neopterygii.…”