The first generation was a group of strange creatures, half fish and
half Crustacean, which are known as the Ostracoderms. They had large
armour-plated heads, which recall the Trilobite, and suggest that they
too burrowed in the mud of the sea or (as many think) of the inland
lakes, making havoc among the shell-fish, worms, and small Crustacea.
The hind-part of their bodies was remarkably fish-like in structure. But
they had no backbone--though we cannot say whether they may not have
had a rod of cartilage along the back--and no articulated jaws like the
fish. Some regard them as a connecting link between the Crustacea
and the fishes, but the general feeling is that they were an abortive
development in the direction of the fish. The sharks and other large
fishes, which have appeared in the Silurian, easily displace these
clumsy and poor-mouthed competitors One almost thinks of the aeroplane
superseding the navigable balloon.
Of the fishes the Arthrodirans dominated the inland seas (apparently),
while the sharks commanded the ocean. One of the Arthrodirans, the
Dinichthys ("terrible fish"), is the most formidable fish known to
science. It measured twenty feet from snout to tail. Its monstrous head,
three feet in width, was heavily armoured, and, instead of teeth, its
great jaws, two feet in length, were sharpened, and closed over the
victim like a gigantic pair of clippers. The strongly plated heads of
these fishes were commonly a foot or two feet in width. Life in the
waters became more exacting than ever. But the Arthrodirans were
unwieldy and sluggish, and had to give way before more progressive
types. The toothed shark gradually became the lord of the waters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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