Sébastien Le Belzic (in Beijing), edited by Juliette Moreau Alvarez 06:17, October 03, 2022

It is a discovery that calls into question what was known about the evolution of human beings.

In China, researchers have discovered 440 million year old jawed fish fossils, which may well be our ancestor.

This fish was named Fanjingshania.

In China, fish fossils 440 million years old have been discovered, a find that helps fill in some of the key gaps in how fish evolved into humans.

This small prehistoric jawed fish is the oldest ever discovered to date.

A new human ancestor

This discovery is exceptional and calls into question the whole evolution of vertebrates, including humans.

The fossil discovered in China is the ancestor of Man and all creatures with a bony skeleton.

Man therefore does not descend from a kind of primitive shark as previously believed, but rather from a more modest fish with vertebrae and a skeleton.

A strange fish with external bony "armor" and several pairs of fin spines that is unlike any current species.

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"With this discovery, we realize that the evolution of jawed vertebrates is much earlier than what we imagined in the past, explains Zhu Min, head of the research team. "These fossils are of completely new types that allow us to know what the first jaws looked like!"

For ten years now, Chinese scientists have been exploring this site in Chongqing, located in the southwest of the country, which reveals these secrets year after year.

This new fish named Fanjingshania predates by about 15 million years the previous fish fossils discovered so far.