TY - JOUR
T1 - Mineralized rods and cones suggest colour vision in a 300 Myr-old fossil fish
AU - Tanaka, Gengo
AU - Parker, Andrew R.
AU - Hasegawa, Yoshikazu
AU - Siveter, David J.
AU - Yamamoto, Ryoichi
AU - Miyashita, Kiyoshi
AU - Takahashi, Yuichi
AU - Ito, Shosuke
AU - Wakamatsu, Kazumasa
AU - Mukuda, Takao
AU - Matsuura, Marie
AU - Tomikawa, Ko
AU - Furutani, Masumi
AU - Suzuki, Kayo
AU - Maeda, Haruyoshi
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Science Research of Education and Science Government of Japan (grant no. 24540501 to G.T. and no. 24340129 to H.M.).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited.
PY - 2014/12/23
Y1 - 2014/12/23
N2 - Vision, which consists of an optical system, receptors and image-processing capacity, has existed for at least 520 Myr. Except for the optical system, as in the calcified lenses of trilobite and ostracod arthropods, other parts of the visual system are not usually preserved in the fossil record, because the soft tissue of the eye and the brain decay rapidly after death, such as within 64 days and 11 days, respectively. The Upper Carboniferous Hamilton Formation (300 Myr) in Kansas, USA, yields exceptionally well-preserved animal fossils in an estuarine depositional setting. Here we show that the original colour, shape and putative presence of eumelanin have been preserved in the acanthodii fish Acanthodes bridgei. We also report on the tissues of its eye, which provides the first record of mineralized rods and cones in a fossil and indicates that this 300 Myr-old fish likely possessed colour vision.
AB - Vision, which consists of an optical system, receptors and image-processing capacity, has existed for at least 520 Myr. Except for the optical system, as in the calcified lenses of trilobite and ostracod arthropods, other parts of the visual system are not usually preserved in the fossil record, because the soft tissue of the eye and the brain decay rapidly after death, such as within 64 days and 11 days, respectively. The Upper Carboniferous Hamilton Formation (300 Myr) in Kansas, USA, yields exceptionally well-preserved animal fossils in an estuarine depositional setting. Here we show that the original colour, shape and putative presence of eumelanin have been preserved in the acanthodii fish Acanthodes bridgei. We also report on the tissues of its eye, which provides the first record of mineralized rods and cones in a fossil and indicates that this 300 Myr-old fish likely possessed colour vision.
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U2 - 10.1038/ncomms6920
DO - 10.1038/ncomms6920
M3 - Article
C2 - 25536302
AN - SCOPUS:84940026160
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 5
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
M1 - 5920
ER -