Dr Hu. Image: Tracey Nearmy ANU
Dr Hu. Image: Tracey Nearmy ANU - For the first time since its discovery 130 years ago, one of the most mysterious fossil vertebrates has finally been classified, increasing our possible understanding of the first animals to crawl on Earth. "This strange animal has baffled scientists since its discovery in 1890 as a puzzle that's been impossible to solve," Dr Daisy (Yuzhi) Hu, researcher and PhD graduate from The Australian National University (ANU), said. Palaeospondylus gunni is a mysterious fish-like fossil vertebrate with a strange set of morphological features, including a lack of teeth and dermal bones in the fossil record. The small animal with an eel-like body lived approximately 390 million years ago. Despite its age, its position on the evolutionary tree has remained unclear, until now. Research led by the University of Tokyo in conjunction with ANU and the Evolutionary Morphology Laboratory RIKEN, has uncovered that the specimen was likely one of the earliest ancestors of four-limbed animals.
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