There are 2 extinct species only known with fossil records, Zaprora koreana from the Middle Miocene aged Duho Formation in Pohang, South Korea.

[1] Prowfish range from the Aleutian Islands, Alaska west to Kamchatka, Russia; from Navarin Canyon in the Bering Sea south to Hokkaidō, Japan and Monterey, California.

The distinctive head of the prowfish also features a number of sensory pores made all the more obvious by fringes of blue or white.

Their diet consists principally of scyphozoans and salps; prowfish use their large mouths to tear chunks from the bells of jellyfish and ctenophores.

Little is known of prowfish reproduction, but juveniles have been observed to be pelagic; unlike adults, they spend their time in the middle levels of the water column, closely associated with their jellyfish prey.