The Devonian ancestors of fishes living today belonged to two main nonarmored groups. The cartilaginous fish, so-called because cartilage formed their skeletons, later gave rise to sharks and rays.
But what did they evolve from, are they 'living fossils', and how did they survive five mass extinctions? Sharks belong to a group of creatures known as cartilaginous fishes, because most of their ...
But we’ve learned a lot about the history and evolution of sharks from their fossilised teeth. ‘We think early sharks developed a cartilaginous skeleton because it better suited their lifestyle,’ ...
This made us wonder whether the cartilaginous outer ear may also have arisen from some ancestral fish structure." The first clue toward cracking this mystery was the team's discovery that gills ...