Oldest conjugal fossils found. TO BE INTERSPECIES.

[weemadando]

This news is so awesome in just SO MANY ways. For the fossils to be found in flagrante delicto is one thing, but for the fossils involved to be from different species? Mang, that'd just piss the fundies off more, if of course, they believed in things like fossils.

Fornicating fossil the world's oldest lovers

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26 February 2009 | 03:27:39 PM | Source: AAP
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Two fossilised fish have pushed back the earliest known evidence of copulation to 380 million years ago.

Meet the couple who may be the world's oldest lovers.
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The two fossilised fish, from different species, have pushed back the earliest known evidence of copulation to 380 million years ago.

Both of them are Australian.

One specimen, Austrophyllolepis, was found on Mt Howitt in Victoria, while Incisoscutum hails from Gogo, in Western Australia.

A team headed by Museum Victoria palaeontologist Dr John Long learned that the fish, both part of the placoderm family, had sex in some ways similar to modern day sharks.

Before these species, reproduction is not thought to have involved touching between males and females.

The researchers had a hunch the creatures were having sex, because they had earlier discovered a placoderm fish with an embryo and umbilical cord attached.

Because the baby was living inside the mother it implied the species were not reproducing externally, as most fish do, but actually having sex.

"We figured they were having internal fertilisation, but we couldn't work out how they were doing it," Dr Long said.

But the Eureka moment happened when the team found an overlooked part of the fish's pelvic fin.

"There was this extra long bone that attached at the base of the pelvic fin and that ended in an open articulation for another element, which must have been made of cartilage.

"So we had this long lobe that came off the fin that was clearly of similar structure of the clasper in the modern shark," he said.

The parallels with sharks were obvious.

"All modern sharks and stingrays mate in this fashion, where the males have erectile claspers attached to the pelvic fin, which they insert inside the female," Dr Long said.

He thinks it was no surprise that the group of fish, known as arthrodires, were also the world's oldest vertebrates with jaws.

"It is our gut feeling there may be an intimate connection between jaws and this type of mating," Dr Long said.

"It is exactly what some sharks do when they mate. They bite onto the female pectoral fin, hold onto it, so it can get purchase to insert the clasper."

Information about the discovery is to be published in the latest edition of Nature magazine.

[Kitsune]

Anybody with access to Nature - Maybe I should subscribe - tell what "Taxonomy" this two different fishes are. The first Jawless fishes data to as far back as around 490 MY. Types of shark seem to appear around the same time as these fossils

[Johonebesus]

This news is so awesome in just SO MANY ways. For the fossils to be found in flagrante delicto is one thing, but for the fossils involved to be from different species? Mang, that'd just piss the fundies off more, if of course, they believed in things like fossils.

I think you're misreading it. The article doesn't describe a single specimen with two different individuals in the process of copulation, but two different specimens, found in different parts of Australia, which both show anatomical characteristics indicating shark like genitalia.

Anybody with access to Nature - Maybe I should subscribe - tell what "Taxonomy" this two different fishes are. The first Jawless fishes data to as far back as around 490 MY. Types of shark seem to appear around the same time as these fossils

One specimen, Austrophyllolepis, was found on Mt Howitt in Victoria, while Incisoscutum hails from Gogo, in Western Australia.

A team headed by Museum Victoria palaeontologist Dr John Long learned that the fish, both part of the placoderm family, had sex in some ways similar to modern day sharks.

He thinks it was no surprise that the group of fish, known as arthrodires, were also the world's oldest vertebrates with jaws.
.

I believe Arthrodira is within Placoderm. The names given are likely Generic rather than Specific.

[Lagmonster]

That is...a misleading article. It uses words like 'fornicating fossils' and 'couple' and 'lovers', but it also mentions that the fossils were from different areas in Australia and only discusses their anatomical similarities, not that they were fossilized in the act of sex.

[Kanastrous]

Maybe they were having phone sex.

Seriously, though, even if the fossil record showed exactly what the article's title leads one to expect, fundies would wave it off as Satan put the fossils there to deceive us, anyway.

[Kitsune]

Found a phylogenetic tree which shows the relationship between Placoderms, Lobe Fin fishes, cartilaginous fishes, and Ray Fin fishes.

Looks like these animals are closer related to shark types than modern Vertebrates.
It is interesting that viviparous and ovoviviparous species has developed several times.
Could a species develop Vivipary (Live Birth) and then go back to being Oviparity (Egg Laying)