Find the fossil of 4-legged animals at the earliest

Chinese scientists have discovered fossils of the skull of a primitive fish-like four-legged animal. This discovery may be evidence that four-legged animals appeared 10 million years earlier than previously thought.

According to a study published on October 23 in the journal Nature Communications, the original four-legged animal discovered in southwestern China will help scientists understand more about the evolutionary process .

Existing four-legged animals, such as frogs, turtles, birds and mammals, are just a subgroup of inter-quadruped animals that also include primitive fins with limbs and limbs.

A number of primitive tetrapods are thought to have moved up to 370 million years ago and gradually evolved into the first and last terrestrial vertebrates to be humans.

Previously, there was at least 16 million years of space from the oldest fossil of the lungfish to the earliest known four-legged animal known as Kenichthys, a primitive four-legged species.

However, the report emphasizes the above finding, which has pushed the fossil record of four-legged animals back to about 10 million years earlier, so the first occurrence of inter-quadruple animals has It is shortened closer to the period when the fishes and the four-legged branched fish.

The study also rounds out the morphological gap between tetrapods and lung fish, and sheds light on the evolutionary pattern of character changes in the early branching process of primitive tetrapods.

In addition, the study of X-ray skulls provided new fossil evidence of the origin of the quadruped brain.