Ancient armored fish revises early history of jaws
Placoderm fossil had skull bones like those of many modern vertebrates
By Meghan Rosen
A freaky fish with a head like a dolphin and a body like a tank may be to thank for human jaws.
The discovery of a 423-million-year-old armored fish from China suggests that the jaws of all modern land vertebrates and bony fish originated in a bizarre group of animals called placoderms, researchers report in the Oct. 21 Science.
Along with a different placoderm fossil from 2013, the new find, named Qilinyu rostrata, is helping rewrite the story of early vertebrate evolution, says paleontologist John Maisey of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who was not involved with the work.