Archaeomaenidae is an extinct family of stem-teleost fish found in freshwater environments of Jurassic New South Wales of Australia, China, and Antarctica, and in Lower Cretaceous New South Wales and Mongolia.

Archaeomaenidae was originally erected by the Belgian zoologist George Albert Boulenger for the (then) two species of Archaeomaene (A. tenuis and A. robustus) of the Talbragar fishbeds, which had originally been assigned to the family Pholidophoridae.

[2] Archaeomaenidae has long been thought to be endemic to Australia, but the Asian genera Gurvanichthys of Mongolia[3] and Zaxilepis of China,[4] and the Antarctic genus Oreochima, suggest that the family had a much farther, possibly global range than traditionally assumed.

[5] By the Early Cretaceous, only the Mongolian genus, Gurvanichthys, and Wadeichthys, and the archaeomaenids' apparent descendant, Koonwarria, survive, where the latter two genera form important components of the vertebrate fauna of a polar lake in what is now Koonwarra, Victoria.

Archaeomaenidae was recovered as one of the most basal stem-teleost clades, lying crownward of the families Pachycormidae and Aspidorhynchidae, but stemward of the family Pholidophoridae:[1] Pachycormidae Aspidorhynchidae Archaeomaene Gurvanichthys Wadeichthys Oreochima Zaxilepis Pholidophoridae Prohalecites Eurycormus Ankylophoridae Ichthyokentema Dorsetichthys Leptolepis Ascalaboidae Varasichthyidae Crown group Teleostei