{"id":5130,"date":"2022-11-24T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=5130"},"modified":"2022-11-12T16:59:03","modified_gmt":"2022-11-12T16:59:03","slug":"a-kung-fu-kick-led-researchers-to-the-worlds-oldest-complete-fish-fossils-heres-what-they-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/a-kung-fu-kick-led-researchers-to-the-worlds-oldest-complete-fish-fossils-heres-what-they-found\/","title":{"rendered":"A kung-fu kick led researchers to the world\u2019s oldest complete fish fossils \u2013 here\u2019s what they found"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n \n
\n \n Heming Zhang<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\nJohn Long<\/a>, Flinders University<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Some of the world\u2019s most significant fossil discoveries have come from China. These include amazing feathered dinosaurs<\/a>, the earliest modern mammals<\/a>, and some of the oldest-known animals on Earth<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

Today, four<\/a> new<\/a> papers<\/a> published<\/a> in Nature carry on this tradition by revealing the world\u2019s oldest well-preserved jawed fishes, dating between 436 million and 439 million years ago to the start of the Silurian period. <\/p>\n\n

The fossil discoveries all come from new fossil sites in the Guizhou and Chongqing Provinces in China. The Chongqing site was found in 2019, when three young Chinese palaeontologists were play fighting, and one was kung-fu kicked into the outcrop. Rocks tumbled down, revealing a spectacular fossil inside. <\/p>\n\n

The research teams behind the papers are led by Zhu Min<\/a> of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing. Min told me:<\/p>\n\n

\n

The discovery of the Chongqing lagerstatte<\/a> (a \u201clagerstatte\u201d is a fossil site of exceptional preservation) is indeed an unbelievable miracle of fossil hunting. Suddenly we realised we have found a jaw-dropping lagerstatte. We are now close to the core of untangling the fishy tree of early jawed vertebrates.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

\n