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Post details: Fossil fish find reveals that live birth is ancient, not modern

05/31/08

by Denyse O'Leary 05:07:13 pm, Categories: Commentary -Events, 394 words

Fossil fish find reveals that live birth is ancient, not modern

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Live birth is 200 million years older than previously supposed, according to a recent report of a 380 million year old fish (a placoderm) with an embryo, still attached by an
umbilical cord:

Until now, scientists thought creatures from these times were only able to develop their young inside eggs.

- "Fossil reveals oldest live birth" by Rebecca Morelle, BBC News (May 28, 2008)

The recently found placoderm dates from the Devonian era, called by some the Age of Fish.

Another fossil unearthed in 1986 was reexamined as a result of this find. It turned out to have three embryos inside that were considered evidence of live birth. In the past, scientists tended to assume that small fish found inside big ones had been eaten, as Carina Dennis explains in "The oldest pregnant mum" (Nature News, 28 May, 2008):

The researchers identified a single embryo in a new Gogo fish genus, and three embryos in a previously described specimen. â€œWhen you find a little fish inside a big fish, you tend to think it was dinner,â€ Long says. But the researchers concluded that the bones were those of embryos, not ingested remains, because they were not crushed or etched by digestive acids. What nailed it, according to Long, was the identification of an umbilical structure and a putative yolk sac.

Finds like this one challenge the widespread belief that live birth is a relatively recent innovation and that egg-laying is older, and perhaps more primitive.

Also at Design of Life blog:

Platypus genome a patchwork of mammal, reptile, and bird, like the platypus itself

Mantis shrimp can see colours unknown to humans, researchers find

Cambrian food webs similar to webs observed today

Can science be unbiased?

(Many biologists and science historians have been attacked as "anti-science" for challenging scientists' basic assumptions about themselves and their work, whatever the reason for the challenge. The ID controversy, however heated, is not the only controversy or even the first where one side was labelled "anti-science." )

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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