A fossil fish, estimated at 380 million years old, has been discovered in the act of giving birth. The fish and her offspring died while still connected by an umbilical cord.
The discovery is also the earliest evidence so far of internal fertilization, or sex with penetration. Other fish species from the Middle Palaeozoic Era laid eggs. Link -via J-Walk Blog
(image credit: Museum Victoria)
Dubbed "mother fish" by the scientists who discovered her in northwestern Australia, Materpiscis attenboroughi is not only an entirely new genus and species, but pushes back the first known case of live birth in the animal kingdom by some 200 million years.
The discovery is also the earliest evidence so far of internal fertilization, or sex with penetration. Other fish species from the Middle Palaeozoic Era laid eggs. Link -via J-Walk Blog
(image credit: Museum Victoria)
[from page 2 of the article] "The fish and its unborn offspring probably fell victim to rapid depletion of oxygen in the water, settling to the bottom of the sea where they were gently covered in layers of silt-like mud that hardened over time, according to the scientists."
hah.
And how would oxygen be depleted THAT quickly... almost a split second? It would be gradual... surely the fish wouldn't still be attached to its mother...
Since they only guess at the age, we can only laugh at their guess.