Millions of years old fish heart was also found from dinosaurs

Gogo-fish

Researchers have discovered a 380-million-year-old fish heart, still preserved inside the fish.

The researchers say the heart is crucial to the evolution of the blood-pumping organ found in all vertebrates, including humans.

It is the heart of a fish called 'gogo', which is now extinct.

This amazing discovery, published in a scientific journal, was made in Western Australia.

Scientist Professor Kate Trinajastic, from Perth's Curtin University, told the BBC of the moment she and her colleagues realized they had made the biggest discovery of their lives.

"We were gathered around the computer and when we found out that it was a heart, we couldn't believe it," she says. It was incredibly interesting.'

Bones, rather than soft cells, are usually converted into fossils, but at this site in the Kimberley, known as the Gogo Rock Formation, minerals have preserved many of the fish's internal organs, including Includes liver, stomach, intestine and heart.

"This is a pivotal moment in our own evolution," says Professor Kate Trinajstic.

His colleague Professor John Long from Adelaide's Flinders University described the discovery as surprising.

He said that before this we did not know anything about these old soft organs of animals.

Gogo fish belong to the first class of ancient fish called plesoderms. It was the first type of fish, which had jaws and teeth. Before them, fishes were no larger than 30 cm, but the plesoderm was up to nine meters in length.

Plesoderm fishes have been on our planet for 60 million years, more than 100 million years before the first dinosaurs walked the earth.

Scans of gogo fish fossils show that its heart is more complex than expected from ancient fishes. It had two chambers, one above the other and similar in structure to the human heart.

Researchers believe that this made the fish's heart more efficient and that this important development transformed it from a slow-moving fish into a fast-moving predator.

"It was a way for them to move forward and become hunters," says Professor Long.

Another important observation was that their heart was much further in the body than other ancient fish.

This position is thought to be related to the development of the gogo fish's neck and made room for the development of the lungs.

Dr Zerina Johansson of the Natural History Museum London called the research a 'hugely important discovery' and said it helps explain why the human body is the way it is today.

"Many of the things you see in it are still in our bodies, for example jaws and teeth." It has the first appearance on the front and back, which evolved into our arms and legs.

"These plesoderms contained many things that are part of our body today, such as the neck, the shape and arrangement of the heart and its position in the body."

According to Dr. Martin Brazeau, an expert at Imperial College London, this discovery is an important step in the evolution of life on Earth.

He said while talking to BBC that he is very happy to see this result.

"The fish that my colleagues and I are researching are part of our evolution. It is part of the evolution of humans and other animals and fish living in the sea.