A fisherman from Texas, Sebastian Benitez, caught an unusual fish in a river that turned out to be a rare hybrid of two ancient species. According to scientists' estimates, their ancestors split roughly as far back as the time of the dinosaurs. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
Benitez was fishing on the Trinity River, where he had previously landed large trophies. But this time the young man managed to catch a rare hybrid of a female alligator gar and a male longnose gar.
They belong to one of the oldest evolutionary lineages of fish and appeared long before humans and even dinosaurs. Their common ancestor existed about 100 million years ago, so the hybrid caught by the fisherman can be considered a representative of this species. Such cases of interbreeding occur extremely rarely and make up only about 1–2% of the population.
The unusual fish can be recognized by the shape of its head and mouth. In the alligator gar it is short and wide, while in the longnose gar, as the name suggests, it is long and narrow. Their hybrid ended up with an elongated triangular mouth that combines features of both species.
Incidentally, these ancient fish have another distinctive feature. They were found to have the lowest level of genetic mutations among vertebrates. Scientists link this to an effective DNA repair system and believe that studying it could help in cancer research.
Earlier, Kursiv LifeStyle wrote that a fossilized track of a predatory mammal about 55 million years old was found in Antarctica. The print, roughly the size of a coin, was preserved in volcanic mud on King George Island.