Origin of jaws - the greatest unsolved mystery of early vertebrate evolution

2008年，在澳大利亚西北部著名的Gogo化石矿床中发现了一条3.8亿年前的“鱼妈妈”，其中有一个未出生的胚胎。这一发现吸引了澳大利亚、美国和中国科学家的合作，成为一项新的国际合作。科考队将研究来自澳大利亚中部和中国南部的新化石，这些化石是已知最古老的脊椎动物，有颌和坚硬的骨骼。创新的3D x射线计算机断层扫描和澳大利亚同步加速器将用于研究古代细胞和保存的软组织结构，以寻找交配和内部受精的证据，就像现代哺乳动物一样，可能在颌骨首次进化时就开始了。

The 2008 discovery of an unborn embryo in the 380 million-year-old "Mother Fish" from the famous Gogo fossil deposit in NW Australia has attracted a collaboration of Australian, American and Chinese scientists to a new international collaboration. The team will study spectacular new fossils from central Australia and southern China, the oldest known back-boned animals with jaws and a hard skeleton. Innovative 3D X-ray computer tomography, and the Australian synchrotron, will be used to investigate ancient cells and preserved soft tissue structures, to search for evidence that copulation and internal fertilization, as in modern mammals, might have originated when jaws first evolved.