A biologist discovers a vertebrate that has gills, fins, scales, and reproduces in water. To which vertebrate group does it belong?
Fish
The animal described is a fully aquatic vertebrate: it breathes with gills, swims with fins, has a body covered by scales and also breeds in water. This set of features is the defining combination of the class Pisces.
Fishes are cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates with a streamlined body, gills for extracting dissolved oxygen from water, paired and unpaired fins for swimming, scales on the skin, and most lay eggs that are fertilised in the water.
Amphibians have gills only in their larval stage and adults have moist, scaleless skin with limbs instead of fins. Reptiles have dry scaly skin but breathe through lungs and lay shelled eggs on land.
Mammals breathe through lungs, have hair or fur and mammary glands, and most give birth to young ones, so none of these groups shows gills, fins and scales together throughout life.
Hence, Fish.
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