In 2013, a major new discovery of paleontology was reported at home and abroad. It has been exaggerated by some media: the ancestors of fish with "human faces" have been found! So what exactly did paleontologists find?
In 2013, a team led by zhu Min, a paleontologist from mainland China, found a well-preserved fossil of an ancient fish in the Silurian strata of Qujing, Yunnan Province, and named it "Initial Whole Jaw Fish"!
Fossils of the initial whole jawfish
The original whole jawfish, which lived in the nearshore waters of the northern edge of the gondwana continent about 420 million years ago, is about 20 cm long! It has a complete set of membranous bone maxillary! This is also the earliest known fossil record of fish with jaws, which refers to fish with jaws! The initial discovery of the whole jawed fish compensates for the missing link in the evolution from jawless to jawed! It unveils the origin of the jaws of teleost fish, including our human (human beings belong to teleost fish), that is, the origin of the jaw!
Detailed drawing of the fossil of the original whole jawfish
Initial total jaw fish recovery diagram
The original whole jaw fish swam awkwardly underwater, searching for soft foods such as algae, jellyfish and biological debris. It looks a bit like a shield fish, and its head also has large pieces of bone armor to protect itself! So at present it is also classified as a shield fish - full jaw shield fish. But as the research progressed, paleontologists soon realized that the jaw of this fish was completely different from all known shield fish, and the original whole jaw fish was a new and exotic ancient fish. The original whole jawed fish had a mouth that only bony fish could have, a transitional fossil dreamed of by paleontologists, filling in the "missing link" between the evolution of the two major taxa, shield fish and bony fish. Yes, it may really be our teleost fish, the Ancestor of our humans in the Silurian Period!
Schematic diagram of the evolution of the lower jaw
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