Large filter fish sooner than expected

2010/02/23 Kortabitarte Egiguren, Irati - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Eboluzioa
• Zoologia

The first large filter fish lived earlier than expected. Today they took the place of whales and some sharks and rays in the trophic chain. This discovery has been announced in the journal Science.

To reach this conclusion, paleontologists at the University of Oxford have analyzed fossils of museums that until now no one had studied or that have been misinterpreted. So far researchers believe that these large filter fish only lived in Mesozoic about 20 million years. However, the analysis of these fossils reveals that this group of fish lived for more than 100 million years, from 170 million years ago to 65 million years ago.

Image courtesy of: Robert Nicholls