What went on and on in the Gogo long, long ago?

Exciting news — a fossil fish has been found with unmistakable evidence that she was pregnant at the time of death and burial. And pregnant in the truest sense - this mom contained an embryo that was being nourished by means of an umbilical cord, meaning that she would have given birth (had she not suffered sudden death syndrome) to a flapping, strapping baby fish. Why the fuss? This proud mom is the oldest mother ever discovered, pushing back the record of viviparity (live birth) by 200 million years.

Discovered in 2005 at Western Australia's Gogo Station, the fish was named Materpiscis attenboroughi after Sir David Attenborough who first brought the Gogo fish to public notice in his 1979 series "Life on Earth". The Gogo area is now renowned around the world for its remarkably preserved fossil placoderm fish from the Devonian Period, stretching from about 415 to 360 million years ago. The breakthrough came last November after paleontologists John Long and Kate Trinajstic put the fossil in a final acid bath before typing up a routine description. Upon putting the tail region under the microscope for a final examination, Long could hardly believe his eyes:

Well this is one of these real Eureka moments in science you have once in your lifetime, I think, when we looked down the microscope and there it was - an embryo inside a 380-million-year-old fish. And I was just blown away by the very thought of this fish giving birth to live young, you know, almost 400-million years ago (Radio interview, 29th May).

The previous earliest records of viviparity were from marine reptiles of the Jurassic period that date back to around 180 million years ago; Materpiscis is about 380 million years old.¹ Many fish give birth to live young, but relatively few use the "advanced" strategy of transferring nutrients from the mother to the infant during development. The majority simply retain the eggs inside the body until they hatch (lecithotrophy). A small number of fish, however, provide a continuous supply of food to their growing embryos (matrotrophy). The strategies employed to accomplish this ongoing nutrient transfer are numerous, but they can be lumped into three broad categories:²

1. the developing embryo either eats eggs released by the

mother or eats other embryos;
2. a yolk sac between the mother and embryo acts like a placenta, absorbing nutrients from mother and releasing them to the embryo;
3. a placental analogue - nutrients are secreted from the lining of the oviducts and by various means are transferred to the young.

Now what we have to understand is that all of these methods of transferring food require sophisticated anatomical, physiological, and biochemical design. Rough enough is never anywhere near good enough. Success requires a remarkably harmonized suite of "adaptations" (read, design features) that involves transfer of gases, removal of wastes, regulation of salt levels, hormonal interactions and immunological potency. To suggest that this remarkable package could ever evolve by chance mutation and natural selection is, frankly, an insult to our intelligence. But to suggest that it could have evolved way back in the dimmest, darkest days of animal history is patently ridiculous. As the journal, Nature, tells us,

… the new specimens confirm that some placoderms had a remarkably advanced reproductive biology, comparable to that of some modern sharks and rays. ³

Advanced. That's an understatement. But that is not all — nowhere near all. You will not believe this; you should not believe this. Strap yourself in.

[Viviparity] has independently evolved at least 42 times in five of the nine major groups of fishes.⁴

You think that's mad. (And you are right.) Wait till you see what evolutionists say about the evolution of live birth in lizards and snakes:

Quantitative phylogenetic analyses have concluded that viviparity in squamates has evolved on at least 90-100 occasions.⁵

Once is stretching credulity beyond breaking point. But 100 times!? And strange, isn't it; some dinosaurs learned how to nourish their young internally yet not a single one of their nearest living relatives - birds - does so. How on earth did new dinos forget old tricks? Psst. Wanna hear a story about an emperor and his new clothes?

¹Dennis 2008, The Oldest Pregnant Mum, Nature, 29th May

²Wourms, J. P. 1981, Viviparity: The Maternal-Fetal Relationship in Fishes, American Zoologist, 21(2): 473-515

³Long, Trinajstic, Young and Senden 2008, Live birth in the Devonian period, Nature, 28th May

⁴Wourms & Lombardi 1992, Reflections on the Evolution of Piscine Viviparity, American Zoologist, 32: 276-293

⁵Blackburn, D. G. 1999, Are Viviparity and Egg-Guarding Evolutionarily Labile in Squamates, Herpetologica, 55(4): 556-573, p. 556