Posted on 10/22/2016 3:56:17 PM PDT by JimSEA
A freaky fish with a head like a dolphin and a body like a tank may be to thank for human jaws.
The discovery of a 423-million-year-old armored fish from China suggests that the jaws of all modern land vertebrates and bony fish originated in a bizarre group of animals called placoderms, researchers report in the Oct. 21 Science.
“We’ve suddenly realized we had it all wrong,” he says.
The jaws of humans — and dogs, salmon, lizards and all other bony vertebrates — contain three key bones: the maxilla and premaxilla of the upper jaw, and the dentary of the lower jaw.
“Anything from a human being to a cod has recognizably the same set of bones in the head,” says study coauthor Per Ahlberg, a paleontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. The big question, he says, is “Where did these bony jaws come from?”
More than a hundred million years before dinosaurs walked the Earth, fishes called placoderms thrived under water. Scientists knew that these armored fishes were early jawed animals, but their jaws were unusual: “They look like sheet metal cutters,” Ahlberg says. “They’re these horrible bony blades that slice together.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
That work bolstered the idea that placoderms weren’t, in fact, their own odd group that dead-ended hundreds of millions of years ago — some were actually the ancestors of bony fish (and thus humans). But it was just one fossil, Ahlberg notes. “You don’t want to draw too big of conclusions from one animal.”
Two animals, though, is a different story. Qilinyu, the new fossil Ahlberg and colleagues describe, had an armored skull and trunk and was probably about the length of a box of tissues. Like Entelognathus, Qilinyu has a three-part, bony fish–like jaw, though the creature looks a bit more like a typical placoderm, Ahlberg says. The two fossils “form almost perfect intermediates” between placoderms and bony fishes, he says. Ahlberg and his colleagues suspect the key jaw elements of bony fish (and all land vertebrates) evolved from those bony blades of placoderms.
That jaw arrangement just happened to be the most successful one in the environment over evolutionary time, and those who had it seemed to out survive their com padres.
No junior, you are not related to a fish. But maybe you should be.
The “laws” of evolution are evidently as politically correct as global warming “science.” This is evidenced by evolution laws being revised every time a dog digs up a strange bone in the backyard.
if you notice the shark’s tooth first, I have some news for you...
That’s a Meglaboobdon tooth.
Re: “But it was just one fossil, Ahlberg notes. “You don’t want to draw too big of conclusions from one animal.”
Yeah, when have Darwinists ever done that?
It was a long way to the Coelocanth. (Which still exists).
I'd say it was from a Megalodon.
She is not ETL’s sister?
I recognize it....the shark tooth is cool too.
Paleontologists may study and comment on one fossil but wait until that fossil’s information is confirmed by another or, hopefully several. In human fossils, for instance, Lucy was confirmed by other finds and by having some 40% of her skeleton. She was the first but Donald Johnson compared her with other similar creatures found over a wide area and from a long time period. Arid was older but much the same as were finds at numerous locations.
The study of Lucy is a good example of vigorous debate and controversy before a find is finally defined and new discoveries may change conclusions even then.
Megladon is the tooth, unfortunately I do not know the rack. Does your sister date old married men?
I don’t care how armored the fish is, we shouldn’t be letting anyone or anything rewrite our history.
I don’t care how armored the fish is, we shouldn’t be letting anyone or anything rewrite our history.
I don’t care how armored the fish is, we shouldn’t be letting anyone or anything rewrite our history.
Lol! I don’t even have a sister. :)
A sharktooth bit your sister.
It’s late; I’m tired. I thought this was about the history of the Jews.
I guess you could call it a distant prehistory.
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