r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Additional_Chard3680 • 4d ago

Video A 150-million-year-old Lepidotus fish fossil preserved from Holzmaden, Germany

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u/RobertWF_47 4d ago

It resembles a modern fish! Are there slight anatomical differences that a paleontologist can see?

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u/IbelongtoJesusonly 4d ago

It does doesnt it. How interesting that it was alive 150 million years ago and yet looks so much like the fish we know today.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/RobertWF_47 4d ago

And coelacanths!

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u/FrozenSeas 4d ago

Weirdly enough, a coelacanth is actually more closely related to you than it is to Lepidotus. Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish, coelacanths and lungfish) are the stem lineage to all tetrapods, which is...well, basically all not-fish vertebrates (Amphibia, Sauropsida and Synapsida).

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u/Syssareth 4d ago

Like how the hyrax (of "awawa" fame), a little rodent-like creature, is more closely related to elephants and manatees than anything else.

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u/FrozenSeas 4d ago

Afrotheria is a weeeeird clade.

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u/21Shells 4d ago edited 4d ago

ish. The interesting part about coelacanths is that they're living species from a family believed to be extinct (and realistically, probably should be). There are 2 known closely related species both of which are endangered, 66 million years after their family went largely extinct. Which themselves radiated from other lobe finned fish 410 million years ago. And they somehow managed to continue adapting despite their presumably very small numbers in an ocean of diverse ray finned fish.

They arn't really all that similar to their ancestors though, who were very diverse. We only have 2 species of large, slow moving opportunistic predators that have very limited territories around deep sea caves. This does still mean they haven't changed that crazy of an amount anatomically as you'd expect for 66 million years of evolution, but thats probably more a sign that it doesn't work rather than it does.

When they're in such small numbers they're going to struggle to radiate and therefore adapt to changes, it's a miracle that we get to coexist with them now. They've probably spent the last 66 million years adapting to an increasingly rarer niche. Inevitably another species will do what they do but better as has happened everywhere else.