An exciting surprise was hidden by an ancient fossil from one of our planet's earliest animals.
A heart that was well-preserved in three dimensions was found inside a fish that was380 million years old.
It's an amazing find. Soft tissues tend to break down before fossilization can happen. Three-dimensional tissues are rare.
And it continues to improve. Scientists were able to study the fossils in 3D without breaking them apart. There are details in the fossil that can be identified thanks to its preservation.
The fish's heart was made up of two chambers, with the smaller one on top of the bigger one. This was more advanced than paleontologists thought, and could provide important information about the evolution of the head and neck region.
"As a paleontologist who has studied fossils for more than 20 years, I was truly amazed to find a 3D and beautifully preserved heart in a380-million-year-old ancestor."
The fossils suggest that there was a bigger leap between jawless and jawed animals. The fish have their hearts in their mouths and under their gills.
The fossil was found in the northernmost part of Western Australia. Between 419.2 million years ago and 358.9 million years ago, this region was a great place to live. Sometimes even soft tissues have been preserved as a result of being classified as a Lagersttte.
An animal from an extinct class of armored fishes left the fossil. The creatures flourished for about 50 million years before dying out during a global extinction event.
The specimen is comprised of a crude chunk of limestone rock adorned with a scattering of strange biological features.
We don't have to break fossils open to look at what's inside.
The soft tissues of the Gogo fishes arepreserved in three dimensions.
Most cases of soft-tissue preservation are found in flattened fossils. Modern scanning techniques allow us to study the soft tissues without damaging them. The project would not have been possible in the past.
The team used the help of scientists at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France. The densities showed that the arthrodire's bones were not the only ones preserved.
The team was able to study the layout of the fish.
"For the first time, we can see all the organs together in a primitive jawed fish, and we were surprised to learn that they were not so different from us."
The key difference was that the fish's liver was large and made it possible for them to stay afloat. We found no evidence of lungs in any of the extinct armored fishes that we examined, which suggests that they evolved independently in the fishes.
Paleontologists have been able to reconstruct and understand the musculature of the Gogo arthrodires. There are arthrodire embryos found in the formation.
There may be more treasures to be found in the Australian desert.
The fossils of soft organs in ancient fishes are the best preserved in the world and are truly the stuff of palaeontologists' dreams.
The value of the Gogo fossils is shown by them. One of the most significant fossil sites in the world, Gogo has given us world firsts, from the origins of sex to the oldest heart in the animal kingdom. The site needs to be considered for world heritage status.
The research has appeared in a journal.
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