Early backboned creatures have been reconstructed the wrong way around for the last 100 years, astonishing 3D X-ray images have revealed.
By using high resolution X-ray imaging researchers have been able to look inside rocks to establish how the backbone of the first four-legged land animals was constructed.
To the consternation of palaeontologists the 3D view of the rock-encased 360 million-year-old remains revealed that for a century they have been putting the fossilised backbones together back-to-front.
The discovery overturns the accepted way of reconstructing tetrapod fossils and means that scientists will have to rethink how the backbone developed in creatures such as Ichthyostega, Acanthostega and Pederpes.
‘For more than 100 years, early tetrapods were thought to have vertebrae composed of three sets of bones - one bone in front, one on top, and a pair behind,’ said Dr Stephanie Pierce, of the Royal Veterinary College.
‘But, by peering inside the fossils using synchrotron X-rays we have discovered that this traditional view literally got it back-to-front.
‘The results of this study force us to re-write the textbook on backbone evolution in the earliest limbed animals.’
Modern-day tetrapods, including humans, have a spine in which each vertebra is a single bone.
In early tetrapods each vertebra was composed of multiple bones but until now scientists reconstructed them the wrong way around.
Dr Pierce, who led the international study alongside Professor Jennifer Clack of the University of Cambridge, subjected rock-encased fossils to high energy synchrotron radiation.
Most known fossils of the earliest tetrapods, and those of the first backboned fish, are trapped in rock but the X-ray process allows scientists to see them without damage the delicate remains.
source: dailymail
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