The First Tetrapods Appeared in China

Location map and lithocolumn of
 Tungsenia paradoxa. (Picture from:
 http://www.nature.com/)

Chinese scientists found the fossil skull of the tetrapods animal (four-legged) that looks at a glance like a fish. The fossil, named Tungsenia paradoxa is found in the southwestern region of China and is claimed as the first tetrapod fossils on earth.

"Fossils can reveal finned animals transition into limbed animals," the scientists said on Friday, as quoted by Xinhua. "Animals limbed four living today, such as amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, only belong to one group, the Superclass tetrapods. Within taxonomic groups, is also in animals and animal finned finned like limbs.

Some species are believed to limbed animals moved from sea to land about 370 million years ago. The animals were then developed. into terrestrial vertebrates beginning and eventually evolved into humans.

Previously, a distance of 16 million years separating the oldest fossils of the fish lineage salamander (lungfish) with kenichthys, finned animals like the first leg of the earth. "The gap between lungfish and tetrapod morphology shows the evolution of the character pattern for the formation of early limbed animals," the researchers said.

A computer image of what the stem-
 tetrapods may have looked like.  
(Picture from: http://www.wantchinatimes.com/)

Not only revealed the emergence of the first four limbed animals, the researchers also scan the fossil skull T. paradoxa with x-rays to look for new evidence on the origin of tetrapods animal brain. A simulation of a brain condition indicates that some important modifications of the brain associated with terrestrial life occurred in the early evolution of tetrapods. "Much earlier than previously thought," the report said.

The study, published online in the journal Nature Communications, suggest that the discovery of the fossil T. paradoxa will encourage fossil tetrapods note backward far as 10 million years. In effect, the first appearance of tetrapods Superclass lungfish occurs near the time of separation and the first limbed animals. *** [XINHUA | MAHARDIKA SATRIA HADI | KORAN TEMPO 4039]

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