When looking at any endure creature , you should ask yourself two thing : Does it have a jaw ? Does it have a spinal tower ? If the answer to these questions is yes , then you share a vulgar ascendant with it — a very distant common ascendant , but a divvy up one , nonetheless . Now , research findings published in this week ’s issue of Nature suggest that ancestor look an fearsome lot like a shark .
The findings are based on the skull - analyses ( based on molds like the ace featured up top ) of a Paleozoic - era fish named Acanthodes bronni . This infantry - long , plankton - munching ocean - denizen live closed to 300 million years ago , but is one of the most well - preserved metal money belonging to a class of Pisces make love asAcanthodii , the earlier known creatures on Earth with jaws as well as backbone . When research worker led by biologist Michael Coates compared the reconstructed cranial and jaw human body of A. bronni to CAT scan of skulls from early shark and bony Fish , they came to a surprising realisation . LiveScience ’s Stephanie Pappas explains :
This closer - than - ever look give away rooftree and grooves never before examined . The researchers took 138 characteristics of the skull and compared them with both the skull of the chondrichthyes , the group made up of sharks and rays , and the osteichthyes , or bony fish such as today ’s sardines and mackerel . They base that on the whole , acanthodian heads fall in with the shark .
“ For the first time , we could take care inside the head of Acanthodes , and name it within this whole fresh context of use , ” explain Coates . “ The more we looked at it , the more similarities we found with sharks . ”
[ NatureviaLiveScience ]
EvolutionPaleobiologyPaleontologyScienceSharks
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