Fossil Meat Found in 380-Million-Year-Old Fish

[Chantico]

Sean Markey
for National Geographic News
February 12, 2007

Australian scientists say they have found morsels of fossilized muscle—the oldest vertebrate tissue ever known—in the remains of two fish that lived 380 to 384 million years ago.

Unearthed in western Australia 20 years ago, the specimens belong to two species of an extinct group of primitive, armored fish known as placoderms (map of Australia).

>>>

Fossilized muscle is quite rare, and the new finds are even more exceptional, because they weren't flattened but rather preserved with their three-dimensional shape intact, the researchers say.

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"But when we look at the Gogo fish, we see that so much of the human body plan is pushed back into the fishes. So that the origin of all our anatomical systems—90 percent of it—happened within fishes," he said.






http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070212-fossil-tissue.html

[zanne]

1. 384 million years ago...

Suddenly, I don't feel old.

[Bobbieo]

2. This comes as no surprise to me - a former athropology major.

How much seawater do we have in our veins????

[Bobbieo]

4. This comes as no surprise to me - a former Anthropology major.

How much seawater do we have in our veins?? BTW - Whomever - Thanks for the Heart - Deeply appreciated!!!

[hlthe2b]

3. Sushi, anyone?

:evilgrin:



fascinating...





To whomever gave me the donation heart... Thanks so much! I'm very touched. :loveya:

[DBoon]

21. or Hakarl

an Icelandic treat

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3895653

[theaudacity]

5. 380 MILLION? you mean 5,000 year old at the most.

unless this is some sort of godfish. Otherwise this is just impossible.

[ArbustoBuster]

18. It's 380 million very small years.

They're more like yearlings than full-fledged years.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

6. ahem. (Cough, cough) it is 6,018 YEARS ago, thank you very much.

And if you try to destroy our christian nation, founded on fundie-mental biblical words and ideas, well, the wrath of god will eradicate you vile philli-steins.

[xchrom]

9. then where will we get our philli-steaks?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

13. near the philli cheese and philli-thropists' kiosk

Oops, I used a soviet word. Kiosk. I must be a-putin around, as a russophile anti-american terra-ist.

[xchrom]

15. you made me laugh OUT LOUD.

:rofl:

[Ezlivin]

7. How does it taste pan fried?

Once our oceans are depleted of fish, perhaps we'll turn to fossil meats.

[denverbill]

8. That God! Ha! Always trying to fool us into believing the earth is more than 6000 years old!

Whodda thunk that 6000 years ago God would've bothered to put a pretend hunk of fossilized meat into a fish and bury it underground and set the conditions to make it looks 384 million years ago. I wonder if he did that on the first day or the 6th? And all that effort just to make us possibly dispute the literal truth of the Bible so that we might be a bit less likely to believe in him. Funny too, cause if I was God and if I wanted people to believe in me as much as he seems to want us to believe in him, I'd have make the fake fossils never more than 6000 years old.

[Chantico]

11. Who knew She was such a Prankster?

[physioex]

23. LOL...Hilarious...Welcome to DU EOM

[A Simple Game]

19. If God would put half of the effort into fixing us as God puts into

fooling us, I probably wouldn't be agnostic.

[physioex]

24. LOL....Too Funny...EOM

[xchrom]

10. more placoderms

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/basalfish/placodermi.html

The extinct armored fishes known as placoderms make up what is considered to be the earliest branch of the gnathostome family tree -- the earliest branch of the jawed fishes. Placoderms bore heavy bony armor on the head and neck, often with an unusual joint in the dorsal armor between the head and neck regions; this joint apparently allowed the head to move upwards as the jaw dropped downwards, creating a larger gape. However, most of the body was either naked or, less commonly, covered with small scales. Both of the placoderms shown above had long bodies with heterocercal (asymmetrical, shark-like) tails extending past the head armor.

Unlike all other jawed vertebrates, placoderms never had teeth, and did not descend from toothed ancestors. Instead, bony plates associated with the jaws performed the function of teeth, sometimes forming razor-like, literally self-sharpening edges (as can be seen in Dunkleosteus on the left). Additional peculiarities of the skull, such as nasal capsules that were not fused to the rest of the braincase, distinguish placoderms from all other jawed vertebrates. Furthermore, in 1997, a placoderm fossil from Antarctica was found to contain preserved pigment cells: iridescent silver on the ventral side (belly) and red on the dorsal side (back). Placoderms are the oldest vertebrates for which we know something about their color in life. This further implies that placoderms may have had color vision.

http://www.nhm.uio.no/palmus/galleri/montre/english/m_panserhai_e.htm

Placodermi - armoured sharks
The armoured sharks - Placodermi - were a numerous group of fish which had developed real jaws. They lived in the Devonian only. In many Placoderms, the head and front part of the body was covered by a strong armour of rigid and fused bony plates. Other forms developed scales and small bony plates. The endoskeleton was made of cartilage or mineralised cartilage. The Placoderms had paired pectoral and pelvic fins. Giants of 9 metres lenght are known, others were only a few centimetres long.
Armoured arm-sharks - Antiarchi - had an armour covering the head, the front part of the body and the pectoral fins. They had a flat ventral side and a small mouth, and lived near the bottom of the sea.

[alfredo]

12. I think they found some flexible marrow from a dino

last year.

[not_a_robot]

14. This must be

the necrovores find of the ages. I wonder if any extremist of the fetish will get to eat it.

[aquart]

17. Well, maybe if you grind it to a fine powder.

Would it be a protein powder? Or something else since it's fossilized?

[Trillo]

16. So, if we eat fish,

does that mean we're eating ourselves?

[Canuckistanian]

20. Fossil meat? Damn, I should have thrown out that turkey in '84

Now, archaeologists will be applying for grants to search my fridge.

[tabasco]

22. Don't tell the Japanese.

They'll make a delicacy out of it.