The origin and evolution of life has always been one of the main topics in scientific research. The origin and evolution of vertebrates are related to where humans come from, so they are widely concerned. The team of Academician Zhu Min from the Institute of vertebrate paleontology and Paleoanthropology of Chinese Academy of Sciences published four papers in the form of cover articles in Nature, focusing on their latest research progress in the origin and earliest radiation differentiation of jaws.

Scientists in China confirmed that human beings evolved from fish, and this topic topped the hot search list in Weibo, and the evolutionary history from fish to human beings triggered a heated discussion. Many netizens exclaimed that the ancestors of human beings were not monkeys, how did they become fish, and the textbooks had to be changed again.

The process of evolution

The evolution from fish to man is not a direct change from fish to man, but an evolutionary history of more than 500 million years. There have been many important evolutionary events in the middle of evolutionary history, among which the origin and rise of great white sharks are one of the most critical leaps. However, how this leap happened has been puzzling the paleontology world.

Jaw fossils did not appear in large numbers until the Devonian period began 4./kloc-0. 9 billion years ago. However, molecular biological data prove that the origin time of jawed fossils should be earlier than about 450 million years ago. This means that there is a fossil record gap of at least 30 million years in the early evolution of jaws, which spans most of the late Ordovician and Silurian.