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.
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