Scientists in China have discovered a fossilised fish which they believe could help explain the development of vertebrates.
The 419 million-year-old fossil was found in China's Xiaoxiang Reservoir and was reported by "Nature", an academic journal, as possibly the earliest known creature with a distinct face ever discovered.
Entelognathus primordialis, a member of the now-extinct placoderm family, was a heavily armoured fish with a complex skull and a denterary bone, analagous to the one found in modern humans.
Further to its obvious historical significance, the fossil also explains some important questions previously unanswered in the field of archeology. The find seems to disprove the notion that modern fish evolved from a shark-like creature with a body structure made largely from cartilege, instead suggesting that the bony skeleton was the prototype for most modern fish.
John Long, a professor at Flinders University in Australia, claims the find is as archeologically significant as the discovery of the archeoptryx, or Lucy, which changed the debate about the evolution in birds and humans.