Dr. Yara Haridi

Mm-hmm.

So I basically had pitched to come to Chicago to do my work at University of Chicago.

I pitched, hey, I want to look at the very first thing in the fossil record that might have odontodes, that might have bone.

Let's figure out where our skeletons came from by understanding these early tissues.

I wanted to cut it up.

I want to scan it.

We have really good ways to scan things now.

Let's like throw everything at this fossil.

And the fossil I was really interested in was this animal from the latest Cambrian.

Now, if you remember earlier, I said the best things that we know, the earliest vertebrates are from the middle Ordovician.

The latest Cambrian is just before the Ordovician.

But the problem with these fossils is that they're super fragmentary.

And when I say super fragmentary, I'm saying, like, tiny.

Like, fits on the end of a toothpick tiny.

Yeah, oh, dear is right.

Because when you tell someone, oh, I'm a paleontologist, and then you show them the fossils you work on, I make a lot of seven-year-olds very disappointed.

I know, right?

Do you see the little white bumps?

Yes.

So this is part of dermal bone on these ancient fish.