Discovery of nature’s oldest ‘mother’
Dubbed “mother fish” by the scientists who discovered her in northwestern Australia, “Materpiscis attenboroughi” is not only an entirely new genus and species, but pushes back the first known case of live birth in the animal kingdom by some 200 million years.
The tail-first birthing process was probably similar to that of some species of sharks and rays living today, says the study, published yesterday in the British journal Nature.
