Prehistoric Fish Extinction Paved the Way for Modern Vertebrates

A mass extinction of fish 360 million years ago hit the reset button on Earth's life, setting the stage for modern vertebrate biodiversity, a new study reports. The mass extinction scrambled the species pool near the time at which the first vertebrates crawled from water towards land, University of Chicago scientists report. Those few species that survived the bottleneck were the evolutionary starting point for all vertebrates – including humans – that exist today, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Everything was hit, the extinction was global," said Lauren Sallan, University of Chicago graduate student and lead author of the paper. "It reset vertebrate diversity in every single environment, both freshwater and marine, and created a completely different world."...more