page_title: Chinese paddlefish
section_title: Taxonomy
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese paddlefish / Taxonomy
caption_attribution_description: English: Psephurus gladius
context_page_description: The Chinese paddlefish, also known as Chinese swordfish, is a reportedly extinct species of fish that was native to the Yangtze and Yellow River basins in China. At maturity, the species measured an average length of 3 m, making it one of the largest species of primarily freshwater fishes. It was the only species in the genus Psephurus and one of two living species in the paddlefish family, the other being the American paddlefish. It was an anadromous species, meaning that it spent part of its adult life at sea, while migrating upriver to spawn. Unlike its close relative, the Chinese paddlefish was largely piscivorous, and mainly preyed on small to medium-sized fish.
  Fishing of the Chinese paddlefish goes back centuries, with annual harvest reaching 25 tons by the 1970s. Since the 1990s, the species was officially listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as critically endangered, and has not been seen alive since 2003. A 2019 paper from the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute reported their extinction, suggesting that they had gone extinct sometime between 2005 and 2010, but had been functionally extinct since 1993.
caption: Scientific drawing of Psephurus galdius from 1868
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