Important news about tetrapod backbones

BBC News reported January 15, 2013

The researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) used the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) to bombard the 360-million-year old fossils with high energy X-rays.

This enabled them to create detailed computer reconstructions of the prehistoric animals.

RVC's Prof John Hutchinson said: "Their vertebrae are actually structurally completely different from what everyone for the last 150 or so years has pictured. The textbook examples turn out to be wrong."

Read the entire BBC Science article by Rebecca Morelle for news about this important development in the study of Devonian tetrapods.