The reconstruction of Styloichthys changae, the fossil primitive bony fish described in Zhu Min's paper published by Nature
As reported in a recent issue of Nature (Aug. 15, 2002), two Chinese scientists pinpoint their newly discovered fossil fish as the most direct piece of evidence on the common ancestry shared by tetrapods (all land vertebrates including human beings) and lungfish. This latest advance in studying the origin and evolution of early fishes was jointly made by Professor Zhu Min from the CAS Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology and his colleague Yu Xiaobo, now a Professor at the Biology Department of Kean University (New Jersey, USA).
The 400-million-year old fossil fish, Styloichthys changae, represents a primitive sarcopterygian fish (or fish with lobed fins) that is very close to the common ancestor of tetrapods and lungfish. This discovery also indicates that among sarcopterygian fishes, tetrapods are more closely related to lungfish than to coelacanths, which can only be regarded as a more distant relative of land vertebrates. (Zhao Baohua)
