Ancestors

When paleontologist Romain David first laid eyes on a set of penny-size tubes of fossil bone at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris in 2008, he was struck by the unusual shape and varying sizes of these inner ear structures, called semicircular canals. Paleontologists have long used them to infer ancient animals’ movement patterns, but David and his colleagues today apply them to another mystery: They argue that warm-bloodedness first arose in mammal ancestors likely…

A mysterious, extinct creature that has puzzled scientists for more than a century may have finally found its place in the tree of life.The small, fish-like animal is named Palaeospondylus gunni, first discovered in fossils in Scotland in 1890, which lived approximately 390 million years ago during the Middle Devonian.  Now, according to a new analysis of well preserved fossils, scientists think that it was one of the earliest ancestors of tetrapods – animals with four limbs, including humans."This strange animal has…