Flipper (anatomy)

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Flipper (anatomy)

A flipper is typically flat limb

Limb (anatomy)

A limb is a jointed, or prehensile , appendage of the human or other animal body.Most animals use limbs for locomotion, such as walking, running, or climbing....
evolved for movement through water. Various creatures have evolved flippers, for example most fish

Fish

A fish is any marine biology vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scale , and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins....
(although for fish the usual term is fin

Fin

A fin is a surface used to produce lift and thrust or to steer while traveling in water, air, or other fluid media. The first use of the word was for Fish anatomy#Fins of fish, but has been extended to include other animal limbs and man-made devices....
), as well as certain mammal

Mammal

Mammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose name is derived from their distinctive feature, mammary glands, with which they feed their young....
s (cetaceans, pinniped

Pinniped

Pinnipeds or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals comprising the families Odobenidae , Otariidae , and Phocidae ....
s), reptile

Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
s (turtle

Turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the Order Testudines , most of whose body is shielded by a special bone or cartilage animal shell developed from their ribs....
s, and the now extinct plesiosaur

Plesiosaur

Plesiosaurs were carnivore aquatic reptiles. After their discovery, they were somewhat fancifully said to have resembled , although they had no shell....
s, mosasaur

Mosasaur

Mosasaurs were serpentine marine reptiles. The first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the Meuse in 1778. These ferocious marine predators are now considered to be the closest relatives of snakes, due to cladistic analysis of symptomatic similarities in jaw and skull anatomies....
s, ichthyosaur

Ichthyosaur

Ichthyosaurs were giant marine reptiles that resembled fish and dolphins. Ichthyosaurs thrived during much of the Mesozoic era; based on fossil evidence, they first appeared approximately 245 million years ago and disappeared about 90 million years ago, about 25 million years before the dinosaurs became extinct....
s, and metriorhynchids), and bird

Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
s (penguin

Penguin

Penguins are a group of Aquatic animal, flightless bird birds living almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershading dark and white plumage, and their wings have become Flipper ....
s).

Flippers sometimes occur in non-flippered species as the result of a birth defect.

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Lampanyctodes Hectoris (hector's Lanternfish)2