Lead author James Rawson of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences said: “Tetrapod skulls generally have fewer skull bones than their fish ancestors, but simply counting the number of bones misses some important data. The research, published this week in Science Advances, quantified the organisation of skull bones in over 100 living and fossil animals to better understand how skulls changed as tetrapods evolved. Tetrapods evolved from fish and were the earliest land animals with limbs and digits the ancestors of everything from amphibians to humans. And, rather than promoting the diversification of life on land, these changes to skull anatomy actually restricted the evolution of tetrapod skulls.

(PRESS RELEASE) BRISTOL, / EuropaWire/ - University of Bristol, a red brick research university, Pompeu Fabra University, a public university based in Barcelona, and University College London, one of the top ten universities in the world and No.2 in the UK for research power, have announced that their researchers have just released a new research on quantifying the organisation of skull bones in over 100 living and fossil animals to better understand how skulls changed as tetrapods evolved.īy analysing fossil skulls of animals across the transition from an aquatic to terrestrial environment, researchers from the University of Bristol, Barcelona’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra and University College London discovered that tetrapods had more complex connections between their skull bones than fish. Original artist: Mark Garlick (Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo)

Skull and bones hat