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Nature 458, 413-414 (26 March 2009) | doi:10.1038/458413a; Published online 25 March 2009

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Palaeontology: Beyond the Age of Fishes

Michael I. Coates1

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Discovery of an unusually intact and ancient fossil fish provides further evidence that the search for modern vertebrate origins requires breaking out of the Devonian and into the preceding period.

As a rule, the earliest fossils of living groups tend to be scrappy, and such fragments lend themselves to contentious interpretations. For 'bony fishes', Osteichthyes — the division of vertebrates that includes everything from humans to halibut — the record of articulated fossils peters out within the Lower Devonian1, some 400 million years ago.

  1. Michael I. Coates is in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
    Email: mcoates@uchicago.edu

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