Prehistoric Fish Extinction Hit Reset Button On Vertebrate Evolution
Monday, May 17, 2010 - 17:50
in Paleontology & Archaeology
A mass extinction of fish 360 million years ago hit the reset button on life, setting the stage for modern vertebrate biodiversity, say researchers writing in PNAS. The mass extinction scrambled the species pool near the time at which the first vertebrates crawled from water towards land. Those few species that survived the bottleneck were the evolutionary starting point for all vertebrates--including humans--that exist today. "Everything was hit; the extinction was global," said Lauren Sallan of the University of Chicago and lead author of the paper. "It reset vertebrate diversity in every single environment, both freshwater and marine, and created a completely different world." read more