How fossils of fish that lived 380 million years ago help explain how the modern-day 'six pack' evolved

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} The 380-million-year-old fossils of pre-historic fish could help scientists explain how the modern-day 'six pack’ evolved.

Swedish researchers found that the 'miraculously preserved’ placoderm fish from north west Australia had well-developed powerful abdominal muscles 'not unlike the human equivalents displayed on the beaches of the world every summer'.

And this gives scientist a rare opportunity to understand how modern-day abs have developed.

Rare soft tissue samples have been found by Swedish scientists in the fossils of fish from the Gogo Formation of north western Australia. They show that the jawed fishes had strong neck and abdominal muscles

WHAT ARE PLACODERMS?

Placodermi comes from the Greek for 'plate-skinned'

They are an extinct class of prehistoric fish which lived around 400 million years ago - from the late Silurian to the end of the Devonian Period.

Their head and thorax were covered by articulated armoured plates and the rest of the body was scaled or naked, depending on the species.

Placoderms were among the first jawed fish and their jaws are thought to have evolved from their gill arches.

A 380-million-year-old fossil of one species represents the oldest known example of live birth.

The fish were found in the Gogo Formation, a sedimentary rock formation in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia.

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The area is renowned for being a trove of preserved fossil fishes including the placoderms - an extinct group that includes some of the earliest jawed fishes.

Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden made this latest discovery and found that the muscle and soft tissue were well preserved.

The strong abdominal muscles that Swedish scientists believe would have featured in the jawed fish of the Australian Gogo Formation are 'not unlike' those seen in modern-day human six-packs, such as Daniel Craig's in Bond film Casino Royale, pictured

Bones and teeth fossilise far more easily than soft tissues and are usually the only traces of the animal that remain.

This makes the rare fossil localities that preserve soft tissues - such as the one discovered by the Swedish university - all the more valuable.

The team, led by Professor Per Ahlberg noticed that the fish would have had a well-developed neck musculature as well as powerful abdominal muscles.

Living fish, by contrast, usually have a rather simple body musculature without such specialisations.

Ahlberg said: 'This [discovery] shows that vertebrates developed a sophisticated musculature much earlier than we had thought.

'It also cautions against thinking that we can interpret fossil organisms simply by metaphorically draping their skeletons in the soft tissues of living relatives.'

Australian researchers had previously discovered that these fossils contained soft tissue.

Now with the help of Ahlberg's team and the ESRF synchrotron in Grenoble, France, they have managed to resconstruct the musulcature of the fish.

An artist's impression of what the placoderm fish that the Australian fossils came from would have looked like. Placoderms were among the first jawed fish and their jaws are thought to have evolved from their gill arches. Their name comes from the Greek for 'plate-skinned'