In the early days of Silurian , the first jawed vertebrates appeared on the earth, and all modern terrestrial vertebrates originated from these fish-like organisms. The earliest representation of this group is little known, but recently Chinese scientists were lucky enough to discover perhaps the oldest jawed animal on Earth: this shark-like fish is about 420 million years old.
Reconstruction of a new fish
sting fish is a strange fish, a distant relative of modern sharks, but the characteristics of cartilage fish and bone fish are combined in the bone structure. is different from modern sharks, these animals have bone armor, and except for their tails, each fin has long and pointed spikes in front of it.
Although they look weird, Spinelid is directly related to modern terrestrial vertebrates (including humans): they are the oldest vertebrates, and they have teeth. In the future, this danger on anatomy will determine the dominance of jaw on the earth.
A new fish fossil has been discovered in Guizhou Province in southern China, representing thousands of bone fragments that scientists have worked hard to piece together. The fish was named Fanjingshania renovatah—to commemorate the famous UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the same province.
Fanjing Mountain's body is covered with many bone spurs, and dentin is exposed in the scales. This substance can strengthen our teeth and is part of modern shark scales. Strangely, although the skeleton structure of this fish is similar to sharks and rays , scientists have found signs of absorption and remodeling in their bones, processes that can still be observed during bone development in bone fish and terrestrial vertebrates.
Therefore, the structure of Fanjing Mountain combines the characteristics of cartilage fish and bony fish, although it is still more phylogenetically close to sharks than sturgeon and crucian carp . Located at the bottom of the jaw evolution tree, this magical fish allows us to understand what the first animals on Earth look like, with teeth—the common ancestor of all modern terrestrial vertebrates.
This study was published in the magazine "Natural "
