This is a blog post I wrote for the PLOS Paleo Community, and was published in March 2017. I am archiving it here on my personal website. The text has been slightly modified. You can see the original post here.
For all of the love and popularity that the “Age of Dinosaurs” receives, we wouldn’t be where we are without evolutionary innovations that occurred during the “Age of Fishes.” The Devonian Period (419.2–358.9 million years ago) witnessed a great increase in global abundance and diversity of jawed vertebrates. But a recent study presents evidence that early jawed fishes may have evolved earlier, in the Silurian Period (443.7–419.2 million years ago), with China at its epicenter.
The study, published in PLOS ONE by Brian Choo from Flinders University, Australia, with colleagues from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, China, describes a new fossil from the Kuanti Formation of Yunnan, southwestern China. The fish, dubbed Sparalepis tingi, is based on a beautifully-preserved and articulated partial specimen, and supports the idea that this area of Asia may represent an early boom of diversification of bony fishes, long before the Devonian “Age of Fishes.”
The Kuanti Formation (~423 Ma) is rich in marine fossils: corals, molluscs, trilobites, as well as several various groups of fishes, including placoderms, acanthodians, and osteichthyans. Only until recently, however, the knowledge of fishes from this formation was based on highly fragmentary material. For example, one bony fish from the Kuanti, Naxilepis gracilis, is based solely on isolated scales. Another osteichthyan, Megamastax amblyodus, is large but fragmentary.
Then in 2009, Min Zhu (second author in this study) and colleagues described Guiyu oneiros, the oldest articulated bony fish with a mosaic of gnathostome characteristics, including some characteristics that were once attributed solely to placoderms. In 2013, Zhu et al. then published Entelognathus, a maxillate placoderm. These taxonomic studies are based on fantastically-preserved specimens from the Kuanti Formation, and with this study (published in 2017), Sparalepis becomes the third articulated specimen from the Kuanti Formation, and only second known articulated Silurian osteichthyan.
Sparalepis is named after the Sparabara infantry during the Persian Empire due to the similarity of the shape of the scales of the fish to the shape of the wicker sheilds carried by the Sparabara. The scales are particularly tall, thick, and narrow with distinct interlocking articulation mechanisms. Sparalepis is represented by a partial postcranium, body scales, and some fin elements. The pectoral girdles bear large fin spines, as well as large dorsal fin spines beautifully preserved in the holotype.
A lot of these characters observed in Sparalepis are shared with Guiyu, in particular the spine-bearing pectoral girdle and placoderm-like, dermal pelvic girdle. These articulated specimens from the Silurian helped the researchers solve another fishy mystery, by helping them definitively identify isolated elements from the Devonian Xitun Formation in Yunnan, attributing them to the enigmantic taxon Psarolepis. (Zhu et al. 2012)
So what sets Sparalepis aside from Guiyu and Psarolepis as a distinct species? Sparalepis possesses prominent linear ridges and pore openings on the dermal surfaces of all of the larger bones and median scutes are unique to Sparalepis and lacking in Guiyu. The scale ornament of Sparalepis and Guiyu are similar to each other, and different of that seen in Psarolepis.
What is important to note about these fishes is that they display characteristics that were once thought to be isolated to placoderms. The mosaic of characters seen in Sparalepis and Guiyu has caused questions regarding previous evolutionary hypotheses of relationships between placoderms, sarcopterygians, and actinopterygians.
The team sought to address the relationships of these enigmatic fishes, and provided a dataset to test their phylogenetic hypothesis. Their results suggest that Sparalepis is closely related to Guiyu, Achoania, and Psarolepis; this group is recovered at the base of Sarcopterygii, in a clade that this study is putatively calling “psarolepids.” This study also provides additional support to the hypothesis that the ancestral species to gnathostomes likely possessed a placoderm-like bodyplan, and that characteristics seen in stem sarcopterygians like Sparalepis are likely plesiomorphic conditions.
So this study is helping to narrow a wide morphological gap in the early history of jawed vertebrates. And with the evidence provided by this study, we now know that that history began earlier than we thought. Thanks to Sparalepis and Guiyu, we can see that the “Age of Fishes” arrived early during the SIlurian in China.
References:
via The (Now Older) Age of Fishes: New bony fish from the Silurian of China | PLOS Paleo Community
Sarah Z. Gibson 
Hi Sarah, I would appreciate your feedback on the fish portion of the growing online cladogram at ReptileEvolution.com. Let me know if there are any competing cladograms with this gamut of taxa. Or if you know of any pertinent omitted taxa. Cladogram here: http://reptileevolution.com/reptile-tree.htm reply to: davidpeters@att.net
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