February 17, 2023
Bulletin interne de l'Institut Pasteur
Who were the first ancestors of present-day fish?
What are the origins of the ancestors of present-day fish? What species evolved from them? For 50 years, there has been disagreement among scientists over the question of which group, the "bony-tongues" or the "eels," is the oldest. A study by INRAE, the CNRS, the Institut Pasteur, Inserm and the French Museum of Natural History (MNHN) has recently put an end to the debate by using genomic analysis to show that these fish are in fact one and the same group, which has been given the rather peculiar name of "Eloposteoglossocephala." These results, published in Science, shed new light on the evolutionary history of fish.