Every living thing today is a descendant of something that crawled out of the primordial ooze. And now using an old fossil of one of the most ancient fish species known, scientists might be able to fill in a massive 100 million year gap in evolutionary biology and provide insights into how our own species' skull developed.
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00:00Every living thing today is a descendant of something that crawled out of the primordial
00:07ooze. And now using an old fossil of one of the most ancient fish species known, scientists might
00:12be able to fill in a massive 100 million year gap in evolutionary biology and provide insights in
00:18how our own species skull developed. Researchers used new imaging techniques on a fossil group
00:22discovered in Colorado back in the 40s. This is a 3D render of those skull fragments which
00:27belonged to a jawless fish from the Ordovician period called Eryptychus americanus. It swam
00:33around our planet's vast ocean some 455 million years ago, around 225 million years before the
00:40first dinosaurs walked the earth. So why is it so special? Well, it's now considered the oldest
00:45known three-dimensionally preserved skull of a vertebrate, meaning we can effectively look back
00:49in time at the development of the vertebrate skull like never before. Unlike modern jawless fish,
00:54this one has a compartmentalized cartilage-based skull structure separating the brain from other
00:58parts of its head. And the experts say the material was likely formed from different cell types and
01:03modern-day varieties as well, showing a divergence in the evolution of modern-day creatures and perhaps
01:08providing new clues about the skull development of all vertebrates.