Two-faced fish clue that our ancestors 'weren't shark-like'

An investigation of a 415-million-year-old fish skull strongly suggests that the last common ancestor of all jawed vertebrates, including humans, was not very shark-like. It adds further weight to the growing idea that sharks ...

Shark from the Jurassic period was already highly evolved

Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of their evolutionary history than previously believed. Evidence for this thesis has been provided by new fossils of a ray-like shark, Protospinax annectans, which demonstrate ...

150-million-year-old shark was one of the largest of its time

In a new study, an international research team led by Sebastian Stumpf from the University of Vienna describes an exceptionally well-preserved skeleton of the ancient shark Asteracanthus. This extremely rare fossil find comes ...

Prehistoric shark hid its largest teeth

Early sharks that lived 300 to 400 million years ago not only dropped their lower jaws downward but rotated them outward when opening their mouths. This enabled them to make the best of their largest, sharpest and inward-facing ...

Study traces the evolution of gill covers

The emergence of jaws in primitive fish allowed vertebrates to become top predators. What is less appreciated is another evolutionary innovation that may have been just as important for the success of early vertebrates: the ...

Shark and ray vision comes into focus

Vision is a crucial sense for most animals, and vertebrates have evolved a highly adaptable set of opsin genes that generate light-sensitive pigments to decode the retinal image. These opsins include a rod opsin to help see ...

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