Month: March 2020

It’s here, it’s here, Elpistostege is finally here!

What or who is Elpistostege, I hear you ask? Elpistostege is an ancient beastie that roamed the earth some 380 million years ago throughout parts of what is today Quebec in Canada. When fossils were first described it was thought they belonged to an ancient amphibian, before further finds suggested it was in fact a fish. The transition from fish (in the water) to the first land animals (with limbs and digits) was surely one of the greatest ever “steps” in evolution, and Elpistostege is perfectly placed to help us understand it.

10 years ago, Prof Richard Cloutier from Université du Québec à Rimouski, discovered a new specimen of Elpistostege, and for the first time a complete skeleton of this animal was uncovered! The fossil is 1.6 m long and preserves a complete head, vertebral column and all the fins right up to the tail.

Richard invited some of the Flinders University Palaeontology group to work with him and his team in Canada on this exciting new fossil, which is where I come in (along with John Long and Mike Lee). The fossil was CT scanned at the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Facility so that detailed 3-D modelling of its skeleton could be done.

Via this painstaking 3-D modelling of the scans (it took me months and months!), we revealed the internal bones of the pectoral skeleton (arm) including the presence of a humerus, radius, ulna, rows of carpal bones (e.g. your wrist bones), and other smaller bones (digits!). We have found the first fish fingers!

Excitingly, the digits are still contained within a fish fin. And as John and Richard put it in their recent Conversation article “This suggests the fingers of vertebrates, including of human hands, first evolved as rows of digit bones in the fins of Elpistostegalian fishes.” So next time you shake hands with someone (will we be doing that again?) or take a sip from a champagne flute (I’ll be doing that tonight), you know who you have to thank.

Read the full article in Nature here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2100-8.pdf

• Hear my radio interview on The Wire, with Lachlan McPherson here.

Tonight, Professor John Long, Strategic Professor of Palaeontology, will talk about “Rewriting evolution – our fishy origins” at the Alere Function Centre, Flinders University, as part of the BRAVE lecture series.

Come and hear about how the beginnings of the human body plan first appeared in fishes, deep in geological time. “Professor Long will discuss his thesis that the big steps in human evolution took place well before fishes left the water to invade land. This research provides a new perspective on humans’ evolutionary story; one which comes from looking up from the water’s edge, not looking down from the trees.”

I’ll be on the panel for the discussion to follow John’s presentation, alongside Associate Professor Paul Willis (founder and CEO, Media Engagement Services) and Associate Professor Diego Garcia-Bellido (University of Adelaide and South Australian Museum).

Drinks and canapes from 5:20, lecture begins at 6pm.

This event is free to attend but register your attendance here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/brave-rewriting-evolution-our-fishy-origins-tickets-95533279611

The Flinders University Palaeo Lab welcomes Dr Tom Challands! Tom is a researcher in the evolution of early vertebrate sensory systems, visiting us for a couple of months from the University of Edinburgh School of Geosciences. Tom is here for collaboration on some fabulous fossil fish projects, before also visiting Curtin University in Perth.

Tom and I share a love of lungfish brains (not many who can say that), and we’ll also work on some Scottish Carboniferous rhizodont material that he has brought with him. We’ll be visiting ANSTO, the Australian Synchrotronin Melbourne next month to do some scanning. 

Exciting times ahead!