It is one of several new finds that could rewrite how scientists understand fish evolution.
Researchers in China have uncovered the remains of a 439 million-year-old shark-like fish with unusual features that"set it apart from any known vertebrate," or animal with a backbone. The bizarre creature, which is covered in spines and"bony armor," is the oldest undisputed jawed vertebrate ever discovered, a new study reports.
F. renovata belongs to an extinct group of shark-like creatures known as acanthodians, also called"spiny sharks," which have spiny fins and bony plates surrounding their shoulder areas. On the fish family tree, acanthodians lie somewhere between chondrichthyans, which include modern sharks and rays, and osteichthyans, or bony fish. Acanthodians have shark-like body plans, but their bony skin plates and skeletons are similar to those of bony fish. Researchers suspect that F.
One of the main differences is in the fish's shoulder armor, which covers a greater area than the armor of other acanthodians and is fused to multiple spines, the researchers wrote. "This level of hard tissue modification is unprecedented in chondrichthyans," lead study author Plamen Andreev, a paleontologist at Qujing Normal University in China, said in the statement. It shows a"greater than currently understood plasticity" of how early mineralized skeletons developed and points to the evolutionary origins of modern skeletons, including those in humans, he added.
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