If you could transcend time, you could experience everything instantaneously. Then, you might be able to see evolution happen in the blink of an eye. Imagine observing it all over eons, just like that. Speeding up time, you watch it all unfold rapidly: a fish swimming in the primeval sea fans its gills out to breathe. In the next instance, you see those gills have transformed, along with the body shape. Skipping through a time-lapse of millions of years, descendants morph in endless ways until an amphibian lumbers out of the water. And then, a furry mammal scurries across the land, looking nothing like a fish. Where the gills once were, there are protruding fleshy ears!
It sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it? Given our creeping perception of time, such evolutionary changes are hard to fathom. Yet, this is what scientists have discovered. According to LiveScience, they “traced the evolutionary origin of humans’ outer ears to the gills of ancient fish through a series of gene-editing experiments.” Going back further than that, the scientists discovered the fish’s ancestral connection to “living fossils,” the Horseshoe crabs that lived 400 million years ago.
In short, all life is connected. If not for our slowed-down perception of time, we could say we strangely are fishes, in a way.
Video showing the visual similarities between dolphin and human embryo by HealthProKit:
Our Distant Fishy Ancestors
Consider that human embryos resemble fish before becoming recognizable as humans. In the early stages, it’s difficult to tell apart the embryo from other species, like a cat, an elephant, or a whale.
“You might wonder, do we all evolve from fish? In a sense, yes. Our distant ancestors were indeed fish-like creatures swimming in ancient seas,” says the Curious Mind Unleashed (see video below).
Video by the Curious Mind Unleashed:
Zebrafish On the Moon
A favorite fish for scientific researchers is the Zebrafish, used since the 70s to study the development of vertebrates. These fish, common at pet stores everywhere, are also among the first species that may be taken to the Moon for a bio-repository like an Ark.
“Zebrafish has been used since the 1970s to study the development of vertebrates,” says Michael Aranda. (see video below). “Like all fish, their genomes are similar to the human genome mainly because we share a common ancestor.”
And it’s these fish that were a focus of the study from the University of Southern California.
From A Fish’s Gills to Your Ears
New research uses genetic enhancers to discover the connection between fish gills and human outer ears. Other experiments found connections between zebrafish gills and mouse ears, amphibian frog tadpoles, and a green anole lizard! All of these animals share ancestry dating back hundreds of millions of years.
Previous research determined that three small bones in our eardrum can be traced back to the jawbones of ancestral fish, too!
“This work provides a new chapter to the evolution of the mammalian ear,” said author Gage Crump. “While the middle ear arose from fish jawbones, the outer ear arose from cartilaginous gills. By comparing how the same gene control elements can drive development of gills and outer ears, the scientists introduce a new method of revealing how structures can dramatically change during evolution to perform new and unexpected functions.”
This story adds another profound layer of meaning to the ancient Egyptian Three Fish design, the logo for this page.
Video by SciShow about “Why Human May Actually Be Fish.”
“Is there a chance that more species may actually be closer to fish than we originally thought?” Hank Green asks.
Featured image: Mermaid via Pixabay/sergeitokmakov
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