Around 400 million years ago , when even having a spine was a fairly newfangled development , some fish had develop electroreception organs , giving them the capacitance to detect galvanising field as sharks do today .
It is unsurprisingly unmanageable to study the senses of foresighted - dead brute , butBenedict KingandProfessor John Longof Flinders University , Australia , have made singular progress . The astonishingGogo Formationpreserved fish from theDevonian Eraso perfectly they have been described as “ swimming in I. F. Stone ” . By applying micro - CT scanners to unwrap every tiny bump and pit on Gogo Pisces , King and Long have shown that some of these fishes had organs so similar to those seen in their descendent that the function must have been very standardized . Meanwhile other fish from the same era have an strange reed organ whose habit we can only suspect .
The subject field , along with those from another internet site dating to a similar sentence on the other side of Australia , have been issue inPalaeontology .
“ To escort , we do not know the origin of electroreception , which is a major sensory system in living vertebrates , but this paper stand for a groundbreaking study devote the first detailed overview of electrosensory systems in ancient fish , ” Long said in astatement .
Long explain to IFLScience that Devonian lungfish have stoma on their snouts very similar to their modern descendants . While some of these pore resemble those used today to observe movements and press gradients in the water supply , others , Long said ; “ match the localization and sound structure of electroreceptors in a like chemical group of live fish , so we ’re fairly confident . ” likewise , variety meat in other ray - finned Pisces , which are now well the most rough-cut Pisces family , resemble those found in some of their descendants .
As interested as the authors are in discovering the former examples of these sophisticated detectors , they ’re also intrigued by a young harmonium they found in someplacodermsfrom the same sites . Placoderms were heavily panoplied bony Pisces the Fishes that once dominated the seas but buy the farm out 360 million year ago . King and Long found some had pits on their cheeks that appear to have had a sensory role . They called this “ Young ’s apparatus ” , but its accurate nature can not be confirmed . Long told IFLScience he and his fellow suspect it was also an electroreceptor , but as yet nothing can be confirmed .
As appealing as we might incur the idea of an additional sense , there must have been a considerable price to pay up in vigour or brain space because most fish gave it up , along with most state animals . ( As always the platypus is an exception , along with some amphibians . ) Long note electroreceptors are really only used in niche environments today , such as when hunting for prey bury in sand .
