It seems we owe more to fish than we thought. As well as providing us with a source of sushi they may well have given us our fingers.

Previously it was suggested that land based tetrapods were the first animals to have fingers. Now a paper published in Nature shows that rough fingers were present in the fossil fish Panderichthys.

“This was the key piece of the puzzle that confirms that rudimentary fingers were already present in ancestors of tetrapods,” says study author Catherine Boisvert, of Uppsala University (press release).

Using CT scanning, Boisvert shows that a 380 million year old Panderichthys fossil has digit-like elements on the end of its right hand fin. This enabled the researchers to solve a tricky problem: most fossils of this species come from one quarry in Latvia where the clay is pretty much the same colour as the fish (AFP).

“With a nice big bone, that is not a problem,” study co-author Per Ahlberg told AFP. “But if you are interested in tiny, fragile bones at the outer end of the fin skeleton, it is nearly impossible to see what is going on.” Ahlberg has previously featured on the Great Beyond in “Fantastic four-legged-fish fossils”.

Those non-British readers confused by our country’s near-universal usage of the term ‘fish finger’ in headlines should read this article in the Financial Times. Then you will be fully up to speed with an item that fully confirms the bad opinion our continental cousins have of our cuisine.

Headline watch

Digital evolution: early fish had primitive fingers, says study – AFP

Fish Gave Us the Finger – Scientific American

Scientists discover why we all have fish fingers – Daily Mail

Image: reconstruction of Panderichthys fin endoskeleton / C. Boisvert and P. Ahlberg