Ancient Fish With Strong Jawline Could Rewrite History Of Faces

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A reconstruction of Entelognathus primordialis, with the fossil find highlighted above.

Nature

As faces go, Entelognathus primordialis isn't much to look at, even for a fish.

But consider that the 419 million-year-old, armor-plated fish is the earliest known creature to have what humans might recognize as a face, according to research published Wednesday in Nature. That's mostly due to its bony, modern jaw.

As USA Today reports:

"The first Entelognathus fossil was unearthed in China in 2010, but it was not until scientists had chipped away at the specimen in the lab that they realized they were onto something very weird. Their new fish looked like a placoderm, an ancient swimmer girded in homegrown armor made of bony plates. The fish, described in this week's issue of Nature, had small, almost immobile eyes and a flat forehead. And then there was its lower face: a jigsaw puzzle of interlocking bones a lot like humans. It's a homely ancient fish with a supermodel's bone structure."

The question of when fish first sported bony jaws — and therefore a mug that we can all recognize — is something scientists have spent time wondering about. And the latest findings may upend our understanding of how jawed vertebrates evolved.

Entelognathus belongs to the placoderm class of armored fish that Nature says existed some 430 million to 360 million years ago. Placoderms, it adds, "had a bony skull and jaw, but most of them had simple beak-like jaws built out of bone plates."

The recently unearthed fossil has scientists excited because, as Smithsonian.com points out, "it combines a series of characteristics from two different groups: placoderms ... and bony fish, a lineage that gave rise to all modern fish with jaws and bone skeletons. Previously, it was assumed that placoderms died out completely (and that the other, more recent types of fish with similar armor plating had independently re-evolved it much later), while a different, shark-like group of fish called acanthodians led to the bony fishes."

Smithsonian adds:

"This is significant because of what happened next: bony fish gave rise to all modern vertebrate fish, along with all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, including ourselves. In other words, this fossil might mean that the placoderms didn't go extinct, but rather evolved into the tremendous diversity of animals that live on both land and sea — and that this ancient, strange-looking face belongs to one of your oldest ancestors."

That's The Spirit: Why Indians Prefer Strong Beer, Liquor

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A bartender pours Haywards 5000 strong beer into a glass at a restaurant in Mumbai. Strong beer, with alcohol content of 5 to 8 percent, accounted for 83 percent of all beer sold in India last year, according to research firm Mintel.

Danish Siddiqui/Reuters /Landov

Sometimes we at Parallels see a story that's so compelling, we make an extra effort to chase down the facts. So it's in that spirit, this story from Reuters caught our attention:

"Strong beer, with alcohol content of 5-8 percent, accounted for 83 percent of all beer sold in India last year, according to research firm Mintel, a figure industry players say is the biggest strong beer share of any major market. Brewers expect that to grow to 90 percent over the next three to five years."

Alcohol consumption isn't high India, mainly for religious and cultural reasons. Only a third of the country's 1.1 billion people drink regularly. And when people do drink, Samar Singh Shekhawat, senior vice president of marketing at United Breweries, told Reuters, it's to get buzzed.

That explains why strong beer outsells its low-alcohol counterpart; it also helps explain why spirits — like whiskey — are still the drink of choice in India, as this chart shows.

Chart comparing beer and spirit consumption by adults in India between 2000 and 2009. The data are from the World Health Organization.

Source: WHO

Of course, India isn't the only country where the consumption of spirits outpaces that of beer.

Russian vodka, French wine and rum in Caribbean nations outstrip the consumption of beer in those places.

Alcohol consumption in India remains low — but it's growing fast. That makes it an attractive destination for Western brewers and distillers.

Diageo, which makes Johnnie Walker, has a $2 billion stake in United Breweries, the world's largest liquor company by volume. As The Wall Street Journal noted in November 2012:

"Sales of such local whiskeys — which are dominated by United Spirits — doubled India's whiskey consumption to 1.2 billion liters between 2005 and 2010, making India the world's largest whiskey market by volume. Meanwhile, the market for imported liquors such as Diageo's Johnnie Walker has remained tiny because of India's high alcohol import taxes."

India's locally made whiskies dominate global whiskey sales, though few people have heard of them outside the country. For example, United Spirits' McDowell's No. 1 lives up to its name; it's the world's top-selling whiskey.

But India isn't the only country where local drinks dominate the market — and the world.

As NPR's Tom Dreisbach reported on weekends on All Things Considered, the the best-selling spirit in the world is one you probably haven't heard of: It's South Korea's Jinro soju, a rice-based drink that's about 20 percent alcohol.

Strong Quake Shakes Pakistan; Area Thinly Populated

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A U.S. Geological Survey map showing the location of Tuesday's earthquake in Pakistan.

USGS.gov

There was a strong, 7.7-magnitude earthquake in southern Pakistan on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey reports. It's been followed by several aftershocks — one of them with a 5.9-magnitude.

According to Reuters, there have been at least six deaths reported. Fortunately, the area — "145 miles southeast of Dalbandin in Pakistan's western province of Baluchistan" — is thinly populated.

Pakistan's Dawn newspaper adds that the director of the regional Disaster Management Authority says "some houses have been damaged in Awaran and Chaghai areas of Balochistan."

As NPR's Richard Harris cautions, though, "when a quake strikes in a remote area, it can take many hours or even days to hear about the extent of damage it causes."

We'll keep an eye on the news and update.