Recently, an article published in the renowned Nature Magazine dealt with the reconstruction of a skull of Eriptychius americanus, extinct animals that belonged to the class of Placoderms.
This is a primitive group of aquatic vertebrates that lived during the Devonian period. Its name comes from the Greek and means “skin in plates”, a distinctive characteristic of this group of fish that had bony plates.
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These plates served as external armor that protected their bodies. You Eriptychiusamericanus They were notable members of the Placoderms, with distinctive characteristics that made them fascinating objects of study in paleontology.
They have been found in Devonian sediments in North America, particularly in the United States and Canada, which gave rise to their scientific name.
The reconstruction was carried out by researchers at the University of Birmingham in Leiden, Netherlands. These researchers are from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and also counted on the Natural History Museum to achieve this feat.
The research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and reveals that this jawless fish ancestor, discovered in ancient geological layers in Colorado, United States, exhibits an exceptionally distinct.
She is remarkably different from any other recorded specimen. This discovery fills a crucial gap in the history of vertebrate evolution, spanning approximately 100 million years.
Check out more details about this scientific feat in this tweet!
The reconstruction was made possible using an advanced X-ray technique, enabling a detailed 3D representation.
Radiographs of this ancient jawless fish reveal the oldest known example of a skull with internal cartilage, a distinctive feature that differentiates it from any other vertebrate documented until time.
For the first time, a complete reconstruction of this specimen was carried out, which was collected in the 1940s, although its original description is dated to the 1960s and is preserved in the collection of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
This intriguing ancient fish is notable for its distinctive brain structure, protected by independent cartilage, thus differentiating themselves from modern fish, which have solid bones or cartilage, both those with jaws and those with it does not have.
In this sense, senior lecturer in Paleobiology at the University of Birmingham and author of the article, Dr. Ivan Sansom, expressed great enthusiasm regarding these discoveries. He emphasized its potential to advance understanding of the first phase of brain protection in early vertebrates.
Furthermore, postdoctoral researcher in Paleobiology at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and also co-author of the study, Richard Dearden, added that, initially, Eriptychius It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing fossil.
However, thanks to the application of modern imaging techniques, it was possible to identify something truly remarkable: the oldest three-dimensional fossil representing the head of a vertebrate.
As such, this fills a significant gap in knowledge about the cranial evolution of all vertebrates, including humans.
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