2023-09-30 04:00:03
A 455-million-year-old fish fossil opens a new window into the evolution of vertebrates and how they protected their brains. This discovery fills a gap of 100 million years in the evolutionary history of the vertebrate skull.
Image of the workflow, showing the fossil (A fossil (derived from the Latin verb noun fodere: fossil, literally…) and the 3D image.
Credit: Field Museum of Natural History, Richard Dearden and Ivan Samson.
The fish in question, named Eriptychius americanus, was studied by researchers at the University of Birmingham, the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, in the Netherlands, and the Natural History Museum (The process of observation and systematic description of nature begins…). The skull of this fish, found in ancient deposits in Colorado in the United States, is one of a kind. The researchers used computer tomography, a form of X-ray technique, to create a detailed 3D representation of the skull. This technology (the word technology has two meanings in fact:) made it possible to reveal previously unpublished details about the specimen, initially collected in the 1940s and described for the first time in the 1960s.
Video showing the 3D model created by the researchers.
Credit: Field Museum of Natural History, Richard Dearden and Ivan Samson.
Unlike later fish, Eriptychius had independent cartilages encasing the brain, rather than a solid bony or cartilaginous structure. Ivan Sansom, lecturer in paleobiology (Paleobiology, the study of the life of past times, allows us to reconstruct…) at the University (A university is an establishment of higher education whose objective is the… ) from Birmingham, underlines the importance of this discovery. This is the first evidence of a series of cartilages separating the brain from the rest of the head, which may mark the beginning of the evolution of brain-protective structures in vertebrates.
Richard Dearden, a postdoctoral researcher in paleobiology at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, adds that despite its unattractive appearance, Eriptychius has something unique: it is the oldest vertebrate skull (Vertebrates are a subphylum of the animal kingdom. This taxon, which in its…) preserved in three dimensions (In the common sense, the notion of dimension refers to size; the dimensions of a part…) in the fossil record.
Image of the Eriptychius fossil.
Crédit: Field Museum of Natural History et Ivan Samson.
Reconstitution d’Eriptychius.
Credit: Field Museum of Natural History, Richard Dearden
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