ABOVE: Pituriaspis, a jawless fish that lived 410 million years ago
NOBUMICHI TAMURA
The paucity of fossils from the time of the earliest vertebrates—around 480 million years ago—has made it hard to definitively determine the types of habitats where backbones first evolved. But predictions based on the fossil data that do exist suggest all the various forms of the first vertebrates, from jawless fish to bony fish, originated in shallow environments near shore, researchers report today (October 25) in Science.
Catalina Pimiento, a paleobiologist at Swansea University in Wales who was not part of the study, tells Science News that the result makes sense. “It’s just well-known that these coastal habitats [have supported] biodiversity.”
The team that did the study gathered fossil data from around 2,800 specimens ranging from 480 million to 360 million years ago. Combining those records with environmental information, the paleontologists developed a model revealing that time and ...
