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https://theconversation.com/a-kung-fu-kick-led-researchers-to-the-worlds-oldest-complete-fish-fossils-heres-what-they-found-190749>
"Some of the world’s most significant fossil discoveries have come from China.
These include amazing feathered dinosaurs, the earliest modern mammals, and
some of the oldest-known animals on Earth.
Today, four new papers published in
Nature carry on this tradition by
revealing the world’s oldest well-preserved jawed fishes, dating between 436
million and 439 million years ago to the start of the Silurian period.
The fossil discoveries all come from new fossil sites in the Guizhou and
Chongqing Provinces in China. The Chongqing site was found in 2019, when three
young Chinese palaeontologists were play fighting, and one was kung-fu kicked
into the outcrop. Rocks tumbled down, revealing a spectacular fossil inside.
The research teams behind the papers are led by Zhu Min of the Institute of
Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing. Min told me:
The discovery of the Chongqing lagerstatte (a “lagerstatte” is a fossil site
of exceptional preservation) is indeed an unbelievable miracle of fossil
hunting. Suddenly we realised we have found a jaw-dropping lagerstatte. We
are now close to the core of untangling the fishy tree of early jawed
vertebrates."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
