The international team of scientists, led by Dr Stephanie Pierce from Cambridge University’s Zoology Department and the Royal Veterinary College and her Cambridge colleague Professor Jennifer Clack, bombarded 360 million year old early tetrapod fossils with high energy synchrotron radiation. The resulting high resolution X-ray images allowed the researchers to reconstruct the backbones of the extinct animals in exceptional detail.
The backbone, also known as the spine or vertebral column, is a bony structure found in all tetrapods, along with other vertebrates such as fish. It is formed from many elements or vertebrae all connected in a row – from head to tail. Unlike the backbone of living tetrapods (e.g. humans), in which each vertebra is composed of only one bone, early tetrapods had vertebrae made up of multiple parts.
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Image: Rendering of the Ichthyostega backbone structure
Credit: Julia Molnar
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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Reassembling the backbone of life using a particle accelerator
15 January 2013
Research published this week in the journal Nature documents, for the first time, the intricate three-dimensional structure of the backbone in the earliest four-legged animals (tetrapods).