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300 Million Year Old Fossil Fish Likely Had Color Vision

westlake writes Nature is reporting the discovery of mineralized rods and cones in a 300-million-year-old fossil fish found in Kansas. The soft tissues of the eye and brain decay rapidly after death, within 64 days and 11 days, respectively, and are almost never preserved in the fossil record — making this the first discovery of fossil rods and cones in general and the first evidence for color vision in a fossilized vertebrate eye.

37 comments

  1. That's all well and good.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ...but was it 4K?

    1. Re:That's all well and good.. by Urkki · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ...but was it 4K?

      Well, I don't know about that, but at least it was better than Oculus Rift, if images in TFA are anything to go by. Something like semi-spherical 320 by 240 degrees with 3D zone of maybe 120 by 240 degrees in the middle, or thereabouts.

      Also, it's not just the vision, the display system goes with lateral twin ultra low bass audio arrays, capable of generating fully spherical acoustic environment awareness experience.

    2. Re: That's all well and good.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the one thing that matters is still broken

      The link back to classic?

    3. Re: That's all well and good.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh.... Is that why I keep finding these off-topic rants in the middle of all the irrelevant commentary? For a second I thought that you were God and I was just the schizophrenic imaginary remnant of your 40 day hangover.

      Say, can you tell me where all the decent conversationalists that used to hang out here have gone?

    4. Re:That's all well and good.. by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Funny

      Better than that, it was retina.

    5. Re: That's all well and good.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nuqneH? lupDujHomwIj luteb gharghmey. Hoch DIl loD vam. 'IwlIj jachjaj.

      'avwI' tIghuHmoH!

    6. Re:That's all well and good.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Retina? That explains why the poor thing went extinct due to potential mates not having a proprietary interface cable.

    7. Re:That's all well and good.. by Solandri · · Score: 1

      Well, I don't know about that, but at least it was better than Oculus Rift, if images in TFA are anything to go by. Something like semi-spherical 320 by 240 degrees with 3D zone of maybe 120 by 240 degrees in the middle, or thereabouts.

      20/20 vision is defined as the ability to distinguish a line pair separated by 1 arc-minute. So at 2 pixels per minute, your 320x240 degree angle of view translates into 38,400 x 28,800 pixels.

      The human eye gets away with it because only a tiny amount of the center of your vision has that resolution. The rest is a blurry, indistinct mess. Alas, Oculus Rift does not know where in that 320x240 degree field you are looking at so it can't take advantage of this fact. In the future, maybe we'll have head-mounted projector displays which track where your eyes are looking, and project a high-resolution image only at that spot, while the rest of the field is projected at low-resolution. It would certainly reduce the burden on 3D graphics hardware.

  2. sorry the dates are wrong .... by thephydes · · Score: 1, Troll

    God created the earth and its inhabitants - and therefore rods and cones - somewhere less than 10 000 years ago. Please, please keep this unscientific tripe off Slashdot - after all, all who post here are rational thinkers .... aren't we?

    1. Re:sorry the dates are wrong .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      God created the earth and its inhabitants - and therefore rods and cones - somewhere less than 10 000 years ago. Please, please keep this unscientific tripe off Slashdot - after all, all who post here are rational thinkers .... aren't we?

      Score:5, Truth

    2. Re:sorry the dates are wrong .... by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      My sarcasm detector is intact. Alas, that doesn't always guarantee that I've mod points when I see that someone else's is disabled.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    3. Re:sorry the dates are wrong .... by Livius · · Score: 2

      I'm a died in the wool evolutionist

      Now that's belief in evolution! Not like those half-hearted evolutionists who are only dyed in the wool. Even if they're dyed in colour.

    4. Re: sorry the dates are wrong .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A joke intended to antagonize is most definitely a troll sir.

    5. Re:sorry the dates are wrong .... by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The first person to moderate usually sets the tone, and later mods use less critical thinking.

      To offset, it would have to be worthy of one mod point. As this reply is predictable, it seems unworthy especially on a low comment count article.

      As a troll post, this does state an insincerely held belief solely to get a response. You expected funny perhaps, but troll mod is therefore not totally inappropriate.

      Understanding primacy and anchoring doesn't undo moderation, so just enjoy that anyone bothered to reply.

    6. Re: sorry the dates are wrong .... by JockTroll · · Score: 0

      If you died in the wool how the fuck are you posting? Are you a sheep-fucking zombie, hunh?

      --
      Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
    7. Re:sorry the dates are wrong .... by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 1

      So we should be racing for Frist Mod! instead?

      --

      Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

      Vote for Bernie in 2016!

  3. Almost all scientific results... by uncqual · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    ...refute ID or any notion of a god (or, to avoid offense, God).

    It's really hard to find a recent (last 40 years) validated scientific result that validates, rather than debases, long held religious beliefs.

    Decades ago "factory religions" (i.e., the smart ones, faced with irrefutable evidence, decided to abandon their beliefs and retrench in a new fantasy) abandoned the notion that God (who?) created everything in seven days.

    The ignorant and unscientific still cling to "Intelligent Designer" fantasies just as the Taliban (ISIS et al) do to their irrational beliefs. Eventually, all of these will crumble under the advance of logic and reason and the sheer weight of evidence.

    Humans, for good ecological reasons, seem to want to create a "supreme being". Even as recently as the Dark Ages, this was probably helpful. When all looks bleak, 1000 civilizations that give up because logic dictates that are are going to fail will fail. One of the 1000 that have the "God Gene" and persevere against all logic may survive and propagate their sperm.

    We are all likely offspring of that flawed logic and it is our duty to crush support of that logic just as we, much more recently, reversed our opinions on slavery (i.e., anyone you can beat into submission is now your property).

    --
    Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
    1. Re:Almost all scientific results... by Jarik+C-Bol · · Score: 2

      Wait a minute. First your post claims that a belief in higher power has helped previous generations persevere through terrible trial and adversity, thus preserving society and human kind. Furthermore, this has had an impact on our genetic pool, leaving us with a population that (theoretically) carries a gene that makes them prone to persevere through difficult times, while holding onto a belief in a higher power.
      The you advocate eliminating this 'survivor gene.' simply because it allows someone to survive by applying flawed logic?
      I'd like to borrow your scrying bowl and chicken blood, so I to can see this marvelous future, where the human race is never again presented with difficult times, where basic survival is never tenuous at best, and even the most flaccid of individuals may survive and prosper.

      --
      I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
    2. Re:Almost all scientific results... by Livius · · Score: 1

      Humans, for good ecological reasons, seem to want to create a "supreme being".

      Humans are social creature who identify with their community, and create metaphors for their political and/or social and/or natural context. It doesn't matter what a metaphor is, only what it represents.

    3. Re:Almost all scientific results... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Humans, for good ecological reasons, seem to want to create a "supreme being". Even as recently as the Dark Ages, this was probably helpful.

      Humans are the only animal that is in denial about being an animal.

      Penguin evolution is a fib! And the Earth isn't round, either... nope, it's shaped like a burrito!

    4. Re:Almost all scientific results... by uncqual · · Score: 2

      There have been extraordinary advances in our understanding of science and technology in just the last few hundred years. We can now do something effective about disease, drought, and the like. It's now counterproductive to expend the energy on worshiping an extreme being in hopes that they will resolve these things -- that energy would be better spent addressing the problem with science or engineering.

      Unfortunately, religion brings with it irrational behavior that disrupts society. Consider the Crusades or, more recently, radical Islam killing "non-believers" (well, not really NON believers, believers in a slightly different mystical entity). Or, consider the bigotry justified by religion that is widespread in the United States.

      Nothing prevents people from helping others in their society who are needy even though neither themselves or those they are helping believe in a deity.

      IMHO, religion is now largely superfluous and, on the balance, does more harm than good. Unfortunately, humans evolve slowly so the genetic propensity to follow a religion will probably outlast mankind. However, I wish I could see the look on the face of the last human as they realize they are going to die and their imaginary god isn't going to do a thing about it.

      --
      Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
  4. Can I get me some by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you need to get a licence for fossil fishin'?

  5. they was color back then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    no way

  6. Are some fish color blind? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or was everything just black and white before the 1950s?

  7. Fill My Eyes With That Colour Vision by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No disquise, I've got colour vision.

    They say you males are often colour blind. That must suck.

  8. Content? by mschoolbus · · Score: 1

    Too bad all the content was black and white back then.

  9. It'll have to go by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Upon first witnessing the glory and splendor of the Universe, they casually remarked, "It'll have to go."

  10. the real mystery (to me) by frovingslosh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    OK, early fish could see in colors. And clearly modern birds (and their dino ancestors) can see in color. There is strong observal evidence that amphibians can see in color too. So just how is it that virtually all mammals supposedly lost the ability to see in color (which itself is hard for me to buy) and yet then the apes evolved the ability to see in color again and they did it with the same rod and code mechanism that was used in the primitive fish. I'm hard pressed to believe that there is an advantage for colorblindness that would have been selected for in the earliest mammals.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:the real mystery (to me) by careysub · · Score: 5, Informative

      ... I'm hard pressed to believe that there is an advantage for colorblindness that would have been selected for in the earliest mammals.

      There didn't have to be an advantage for partial colorblindness (they were never totally colorblind), there just doesn't have to be any penalty for the trait to be lost. Same with the inability of some mammals to synthesize vitamin C, no particular advantage to losing it, but with a vitamin C rich diet there was no penalty either and so it could get lost over time. Color vision only works in bright light. Mammals spent a lot of their early evolutionary history as nocturnal creatures, and so could lose this trait without penalty. In fact it appears there were multiple function S cone loss events in the mammalian line, not just one (genomics gives us powerful insights into this today). The article does point out though that "the fact that these gene mutations have spread throughout the populations allows the possibility that the loss of S cones may in some way enhance visual fitness". It is entirely possible that processing of images in dim light could be better optimized through evolution with the loss of the unneeded bright-light color vision baggage.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    2. Re:the real mystery (to me) by jbengt · · Score: 3, Informative

      Most mammals can see color. They (except some primates) are colorblind in the sense that they can't tell the difference between red and green, but they can tell the difference between red and blue. Because of the similarites in the proteins expressed, it is believed that human ancestors inherited a mutated gene for red that had a peak receptivity at green together with the original red gene from another parent. That's why most people now have both red and green cones.

    3. Re:the real mystery (to me) by itzly · · Score: 1

      More likely that the original gene for yellow was first duplicated, and then the two copies diverged through mutations.

    4. Re:the real mystery (to me) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was under the impression, which may be wrong, that there is some cause to suspect that all mammals originally had four types of cones and then lost 1-2 of them. Wiki link

    5. Re:the real mystery (to me) by Zorpheus · · Score: 1

      Same with the inability of some mammals to synthesize vitamin C, no particular advantage to losing it, but with a vitamin C rich diet there was no penalty either and so it could get lost over time.

      Wait, as far as I know the disadvantage of vitamin C synthesis is that it consumes glucose. Humans needed all the glucose that they could get for the brain, and there was enough vitamin C in the food, so they got rid of the converting bacteria.

  11. A fossil that can see?!?!? by um.yup. · · Score: 1

    Man, science is getting weird!

  12. Slow down, cowboy. by westlake · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OK, early fish could see in colors. And clearly modern birds (and their dino ancestors) can see in color

    The mineralized rods and cones in this fossil fish are the first to be found in any vertebrate fossil. The argument for color vision in dinosaurs is more or less based on the theory that if a sexually attractive feather-like structure was colored, a dino must have seen it in color.