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Researchers have discovered the oldest heart of all time. The 380 million year old organ belonged to a prehistoric fish and was found in Australia.
By our news editorsAs well as a fossil with the heart, a fossil with a stomach, intestine and liver has also been found, says Curtin University in Perth. Friday familiar. The discovery was made in the Gogo Formation, a region in Western Australia.
The organs belong to a fish that belonged to the placoderms. They were vertebrate fish that are also considered the dinosaurs of the sea. They are the oldest known animals with a lower jaw. The fish lived about 420 to 359 million years ago.
The fossils found are special because this soft tissue of prehistoric animals is not often preserved. It is also rare that these organs are not crushed into the fossil, but are still three-dimensional.
With these fossils, more research can be done on the evolution of vertebrates, such as mammals and humans. For example, researchers found that the liver of this fish was large and ensured that the animal could stay afloat. Sharks now have that too. Another similarity with sharks is the shape of the heart: it is S-shaped and is located near the mouth and below the gills.
John Long of Flinders University, one of the researchers involved, calls the discovery “a paleontologist’s dream”. “These fossils are undoubtedly the best preserved in the world for this time.”
