Schizothoracine fishes are distributed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its surrounding areas. With the uplift of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the primitive Barbinae fishes gradually evolved into schizothoracine fishes, adapting to severe environment such as cold, high altitude and fast flow. Schizothoracine fishes share the morphological trait that specialized scales (anal scales) distribute on each side of the anal and anal fin bases. Schizothoracine fishes characterize with slow growth, late sexual maturity, long life-span and low fecundity. Schizothoracine fishes originate from tetraploid organism, and polyploidy events are the key factors driving their evolution. The special geographical distribution, morphological characteristics, genetic structure and life-history strategy of schizothoracine fishes have made them important materials for the study of polyploid and plateau adaptation mechanism, and have received extensive attentions from scientists. Combining with taxonomy, phylogeny and biogeography, genetics and biology, this paper focused on interpreting the systematic evolution of schizothoracine fishes from the perspective of modern archaeology and molecular biology, revealing the molecular mechanism of plateau adaptation in schizothoracine fishes from the transcriptome study. The aim of this study is to provide reference for the systematic evolution of polyploid fishes and the mechanism of extreme environmental adaptation in plateau.