Mass extinctions, like lotteries, result in a multitude of
losers and a few lucky winners. This is the story of one of the winners, a
small, shell-crushing predatory fish called Fouldenia, which first appears in
the fossil record a mere 11 million years after an extinction that wiped out
more than 90 percent of the planet's vertebrate species.
The extinction that ended the Devonian Era 359 million years
ago created opportunities quickly exploited by a formerly rare and unremarkable
group of fish that went on to become—in terms of the sheer number of
species—the most successful vertebrates (backboned animals) on the planet
today: the ray-finned fish.