The Minority Report

Ed Young posts today about a new fish discovered that seems to support Dollo's Law^W. Pretty cool.

You’re looking at the face of a new species of fish and judging by the two fearsome fangs, you’ll probably understand how it got its scientific name – Danionella dracula. The teeth do look terrifying but fortunately, their owner is a tiny animal just 15 millimetres long. Ralf Britz from London’s Natural History Museum discovered the fanged fish in a small stream in northern Burma, just two years ago. The more he studied them, the more he realised that they are physically extraordinary in many ways. Not Exactly Rocket Science : Newly discovered fish crosses Peter Pan with Dracula

Secondly, D.dracula seems to be missing several bones, with 44 fewer than close relatives like the zebrafish, Danio rario. They haven’t disappeared – they never formed in the first place. Compared to other related fish, D.dracula stops developing at a much earlier point and retains the abridged skeleton of a larva throughout its adult life. It’s the Peter Pan of the carp family. Not Exactly Rocket Science : Newly discovered fish crosses Peter Pan with Dracula

An animal’s development follows a very precise timetable and set of instructions, but Britz suggests that those rules became more lax as D.dracula became smaller. By prematurely stopping its development, the fish inadvertently freed certain parts of its skeleton to develop new adaptations, free of past restrictions. Not Exactly Rocket Science : Newly discovered fish crosses Peter Pan with Dracula