A series of surprises about 'monster fish' existed in Vietnam 415 million years ago

The monster with the bizarre triangular head is a creature that is in the process of evolving from jawless vertebrates to jawed vertebrates.

Named Nochelaspis maeandrine , this "monster fish" swam throughout southern China and northern Vietnam during the Devonian period . The first recorded specimen was a piece of skull bone resembling a perfect triangular shield found in the Xishancun Formation , Yunnan Province, China in 1987.

Portrait of "monster mermaid" of the Devonian period - (Photo: Dinghua Yang).

According to Sci-News, recently, two more fossil specimens from the "monster fish" have been found in China, the examination results show that the specimens are about 415 million years old.

"They are among a group of enigmatic vertebrates that help us understand the transition from jawless vertebrates to jawed vertebrates," said Dr. Min Zhu from the Institute of Paleontology. Paleontology and Vertebrate Paleontology, said the Chinese Academy of Sciences, lead author of the study.

The newly unearthed specimens - two other triangular-headed shields, with intact skin textures and edge spikes - have helped scientists understand more about the lower body.

It was a flat, pear-shaped abdomen, with six pairs of bilaterally open bronchial openings, a structure that existed in many later jawed fish, even modern fish such as sharks. The creature's mouth is located at the front end of the triangular shield. The place where the "monster" lives is the quiet sandy or muddy bottom of the sea.

Fossils are thought to be particularly important to paleontology, because they are the "middle" species on the evolutionary tree, as ancient oceanic fish gradually changed from a fish state. jawless to jawed fish.

These details have helped the team of scientists to fully reconstruct the mysterious creature in a recent paper published in the scientific journal Vertebrata PalAsiatica.