A 455-million-year-old fossil fish provides a new perspective on how vertebrates evolved to protect their brains, a study has found. In a paper published in Nature yesterday (20 September), researchers from the University of Birmingham, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, Netherlands; and the Natural History Museum have pieced together the skull of Eriptychius americanus. The […]
A 455-million-year-old fossil fish provides a new perspective on how vertebrates evolved to protect their brains, a study has found.
The research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, suggests that the ancient jawless fish found in ancient deposits in Colorado, USA has a skull unlike that of any previously seen, and fills a gap currently spanning 100 million years in the evolutionary history of the vertebrate skull. This ancient fish had separated, independent cartilages encasing the brain, rather than the solid bone or cartilage structure of jawless and jawed fish that followed it.