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Reedfish
 

A recent paper in Nature purports that some ancient ray-finned fish vertebrates may not be quite as ancient as previously thought, by a magnitude of some 40 million years. The findings assert that a group of fossil species have been positioned in the wrong place on the family tree. This has particular bearing on two strange relatives of this ray-finned fish group, the bichir and reedfish.

Based on 3D CT scan analysis of fish skull fossils sourced across parts of Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan and the US, researchers have determined that these “scanilepiform” fossils form a group of evolutionary anomalies, bumping related fossil species off of the ray-finned branch of the family tree. This is significant as it highlights just how crucial this period of evolutionary history is to our understanding of modern vertebrates. Therefore, further studies could provide a much fuller and more accurate understanding of the history of all vertebrates.

Read more here.