See text Lycoptera is an extinct genus of fish that lived from Lower Cretaceous, Barremian to Aptian[1] in present-day China, North Korea,[2] Mongolia and Siberia.

Along with the genus Peipiaosteus, Lycoptera has been considered a defining member of the Jehol Biota, a prehistoric ecosystem famous for its feathered dinosaurs, which flourished for 20 million years during the Early Cretaceous, where it occurs abundantly in often monospecific beds, where they are thought to have died in seasonal mass death events.

[4][5] Lycoptera is a crown group teleost belonging to an early diverging lineage of the Osteoglossomorpha, which contains living mooneyes, arapaima, arowana, elephantfish and knifefish/featherbacks.

[8] Lycoptera fossils are commonly found in large groups, buried together quickly in fine lake sediments likely due to mass death events from seasonal upwelling of anoxic waters during late autumn and winter.

The table below is based primarily on the valid species listed by Zhang and Jin in the 2008 book The Jehol Fossils.