Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'palaeospondylus'.
-
Morphology of Palaeospondylus shows affinity to tetrapod ancestors
Misha posted a topic in Fossil News
Hirasawa, T., Hu, Y., Uesugi, K. et al. Morphology of Palaeospondylus shows affinity to tetrapod ancestors. Nature (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04781-3 Researchers used synchrotron radiation X-ray micro-computed tomography, to highlight the similarities in morphology between Palaeospondylus gunni and sarcopterygian fishes, specifically stem tetrapods. I haven't read the full paper yet but any news on this enigmatic organism is always fascinating and exciting. What do you all think about this?- 4 replies
-
- 1
-
- devonian
- palaeospondylus
-
(and 2 more)
Tagged with:
-
Hello everyone! I recently received this cool fossil from the Devonian in Scotland, it is a Palaeospondylus gunni: I have seen fossils of this enigmatic organism prepared in really wonderful ways to expose more of the animal and I was wondering: would this be possible to do here? I am not exactly sure of the process used on the others, possibly just really fine air abrasion? The fossil seems to be rather thin against the rock but it isn't completely flat, here are some pictures I took under the digital microscope, hopefully they might show it a bit better. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I am happy to provide more pictures if necessary. Thank you for your time!
- 19 replies
-
- 1
-
- carbonized
- chordate
-
(and 4 more)
Tagged with:
-
The little fish, Palaeospondylus gunni, from the Middle Devonian of Achanarras, Caithness, is perhaps the most widely known of all problematical fossils. Ever since it was first described by Traquair in 1890, it has attracted the attention of a very large number of workers. Nevertheless, its affinities have not yet been convincingly demonstrated. The phylogeny of this bizarre fossil has puzzled scientists since its discovery in 1890, and many taxonomies have been suggested. Traquair and the majority of writers have considered Palaeospondylus to be related to Cyclostomes. However, other workers proposed that Palaeospondylus was a larval lungfish, a larval tetrapod, an unarmored placoderm, an agnathan or a chimera. In 2016, Tatsuya Hirasawa, Yasuhiro Oisi and Shigeru Kuratani proposed that Palaeospondylus was a primitive hagfish. This assignment was recently questionend by Z. Johanson et al.: X-ray tomography provided new data and morphological characters demonstrating that Palaeospondylus is a jawed vertebrate. Line drawing: References: J. A. Moy-Thomas (1940): The Devonian Fish Palaeospondylus gunni Traquair. Philosphical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 1940, Volume 230, issue 573. Tatsuya Hirasawa, Yasuhiro Oisi and Shigeru Kuratani (2016): Palaeospondylus as a primitive hagfish. Zoological Letters 2016, 2:20. Volume 16: Fossil Fishes of Great Britain Chapter 6: Mid-Devonian fossil fishes sites of Scotland. Site: ACHANARRAS QUARRY (GCR ID: 351) Johanson Z, Smith M,Sanchez S, Senden T, Trinajstic K, Pfaff C. 2017 Questioning hagfish affinities of the enigmatic Devonian vertebrate Palaeospondylus. R. Soc. open sci. 4: 170214. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170214. Achanarras Quarry
- 4 comments
-
- 1
-
- achanarras
- caithness
-
(and 2 more)
Tagged with: