Fish fossils found in China shed light on human evolution

440-million-year-old fish fossils discovered in China “fill in some of the key gaps” in how fish evolved into humans, researchers announced on Wednesday.

The fossils were found in 2019 at two large sites in Guizhou Province and Chongqing Municipality in southwest China.

These findings allow “to establish that numerous structures of the human body date back to fish, some of them from 440 million years ago”, declared the researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The findings were highlighted in articles published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.
Among the Chongqing finds is a fossil of fish from the Acanthodii family. Endowed with a bone structure around the fins, these fish are considered ancestors of current beings with jaws and spine, as is the case with humans.

In 2013, scientists discovered another 419-million-year-old fish fossil in China, which disproved the ancient theory that modern fish with bony skeletons (osteichthyans) evolved from a shark-like fish with a structure. cartilaginous

The new creature found in China, called Fanjingshania, is 15 million years older than this fish, according to the study.

“It is the oldest fish with a jaw whose anatomy is known,” Zhu Min, the head of the research team, explained to the press on Wednesday.

“It’s an incredible discovery,” said John Long, past president of the United States Society for Vertebrate Paleontology. “This calls into question almost everything we knew about the early evolutionary history of jawed animals.”