Approximately 365 million years ago, one group of fishes left the water to live on land.
, a lineage that would radiate to include many thousands of species including amphibians, birds, lizards and mammals. Human beings are descendants of those early tetrapods, and we share the legacy of their water-to-land transition.But what if, instead of venturing onto the shores, they had turned back? What if these animals, just at the cusp of leaving the water, had receded to live again in more open waters?suggests that one fish, in fact, did just that.
From the surface of the rock it was embedded in, we could see fragments of the jaws, about 2 inches long and with pointed teeth. There were also patches of white scales with bumpy texture. The anatomy gave us subtle hints that the fossil was an early tetrapod. But we wanted to see inside the rock.So we used a technology called CT scanning, which shoots X-rays through the specimen, to look for anything that might be hidden within, out of view.
On March 13, we scanned an unassuming piece of rock that had a few scales on top and discovered it contained a complete fin buried inside. Our jaws dropped. A few days later, the lab and campus shut down, andA fin like this is extremely precious. It can give scientists clues into how early tetrapods were evolving and how they were living hundreds of millions of years ago.
Although that first scan of the fin was promising, we needed to see the skeleton in high resolution. As soon as we were allowed back on campus, a professor in the university's department of the geophysical sciences helped us to trim down the block using a rock saw.When the dust had cleared and we'd finished analyzing data on the jaws, scales and fin, we realized that this animal was a new species.
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