The bowfin is a bony fish, native to North America. Common names include mudfish, mud pike, dogfish, grindle, grinnel, swamp trout, and choupique. It is regarded as a relict, being one of only two surviving species of the Halecomorphi, a group of fish that first appeared during the Early Triassic, around 250 million years ago. The bowfin is often considered a "primitive fish" because they have retained some morphological characteristics of their early ancestors. It is one of two species in the genus Amia, along with Amia ocellicauda, the eyespot bowfin. The closest living relatives of bowfins are gars, with the two groups being united in the clade Holostei.

Halecomorphi is a taxon of ray-finned bony fish in the clade Neopterygii. The only extant Halecomorph species are the bowfin and eyespot bowfin, but the group contains many extinct species in several families in the order Amiiformes, as well as the extinct orders Ionoscopiformes, Panxianichthyiformes, and Parasemionotiformes. The fossil record of halecomorphs goes back at least to the Early Triassic epoch.