Source: CCTV news client
Recently, the research team of the Institute of Paleovertebrates of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found the world's oldest fossil of ribbed squamous tooth fish in the Triassic marine strata of Yunnan, which is the first discovery of the fish in Asia, so it is named Asian ribbed schizophrenic fish. Chronological stratigraphic studies have shown that the newly discovered Asian ribbed schizocephalus is about 244 million years old, two million years before the previously found in Europe. The discovery updates the understanding of the origin of the ribbed schizophoridae and the recovery of triassic marine life. The research results have recently been published in international academic journals.
About 250 million years ago, the most catastrophic end-Permian mass extinction event in the history of life on Earth occurred. In order to understand the subsequent ecological reconstruction of the Triassic, the scientific research team conducted continuous research on the Triassic marine strata in the Yunnan-Guizhou region of China for more than ten years, and successively discovered and named 21 aquatic vertebrate fossils. The Asian ribbed schizocephalus, found in Luoping, Yunnan, is a small nail-eating fish with special scales. Only three fossils have been found in this paleofish species, a rare species in the Ropin biota 244 million years ago. Fortunately, they are well preserved and can fully restore their morphological characteristics, providing important information for the study of skeletal morphology and phylogenetic relationships in the family Ribosquaptaceae.
Ribosquamous schizophrenia is representative of the stems of new fin fish during the recovery of marine life in the Middle Triassic, and the earliest fossil record was found in the marine strata at the junction of Italy and Switzerland 242 million years ago. The newly discovered Asian ribbed schizocephalus advanced the earliest record of ribbed schizocephalus by about two million years, greatly increasing the understanding of the biogeography of ribbed schizocephalus. Because the ribbed schizocephalic fish have the transitional characteristics of both ribbed and schizocephalic fish, its taxonomic position is difficult to determine. Based on the detailed comparison and branch systematic study of the Eurasian ribbed tooth fish, the scientific research team first proposed the view that the ribbed tooth fish is a sister group of leaky fish, newly established the ribbed tooth fish family, and classified it into the order Ofhocarpus. This research result solves the taxonomic problem of ribbed schizocephalus, and is also of great significance for understanding the early evolution and biogeography of Triassic neofin fish.
(CCTV reporter Shuai Junquan)