Scientists have uncovered a preserved heart 380 million years old inside of a fossilized Gogo fish.
The heart is the oldest on record and is believed to be symbolic of one of the most crucial moments in the history of blood-pumping backboned organisms, according to a report.
WOMAN, NAKED AND COVERED IN BLOOD, MURDERS NEIGHBOR FOR KILLING DOG: POLICE
“This is a crucial moment in our own evolution,” said professor Kate Trinajstic of Curtin University, the lead scientist behind the discovery. “It shows the body plan that we have evolved very early on, and we see this for the very first time in these fossils.”
Of the moment the scientists realized they were looking at a preserved heart, Trinajstic said: “We were crowded around the computer and recognized that we had a heart and pretty much couldn’t believe it! It was incredibly exciting.”
Hearts are rare to find, and researchers are often found studying preserved bones instead of soft tissues, according to the report.
The find was “a mind-boggling, jaw-dropping discovery,” said professor John Long of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. “We have never known anything about the soft organs of animals this old — until now.”
Gogo fish represent the first in their class of prehistoric fish known as placoderms, according to the report.
Placoderms were the first to bear jaws and teeth, and they could grow up to almost 30 feet. They were the commanding life form for nearly 60 million years, nearly 100 million years prior to the first dinosaurs.
The heart of the Gogo fish was a complex organ compared to earlier primitive fish, the report noted. It contained two chambers and a structure that was similar to the human heart, according to the researchers.
“This was the way they could up the ante and become a voracious predator,” Long said.
The research is an “extremely important discovery,” which helps explain how the human body evolved, said Dr. Zerina Johanson of the Natural History Museum, London.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“A lot of the things you see we still have in our own bodies; jaws and teeth, for example. We have the first appearance of the front fins and the fins at the back, which eventually evolved into our arms and legs,” Johanson said.
“There are many things going on in these placoderms that we see evolving to ourselves today such as the neck, the shape and arrangement of the heart and its position in the body.”
