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Ancient Armored Fish Evolved Two Ways to Crush Prey, Fossils Show
Key Takeaways
- Flinders University researchers studied placoderms, the first vertebrates to evolve jaws and teeth, from an ancient reef in what is now northern Western Australia.
- The fish lived roughly 385 million years ago and were found to have used two distinct feeding strategies on the same reef.
- Smaller species relied on broad, flat crushing plates to pulverize whole prey, while larger species evolved weapon-like teeth to pierce armored prey too large to swallow.
- Placoderm jaws consisted of paired bony plates supported by cartilage rather than a single lower jaw bone, with surfaces ranging from crushing platforms to sharp slicing edges.
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DT Editorial Team··via phys.org