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Jensen et al . ( 1 ) question evidence presented of a chambered heart within placoderms, citing its small size and apparently ventral atrium. However, they fail to note the belly-up orientation of the placoderm within one nodule, and the variability of heart morphology within extant taxa. Thus, we remain confident in our interpretation of the mineralized organ as the heart.

The origin and early diversification of jawed vertebrates involved major changes to skeletal and soft anatomy. Skeletal transformations can be examined directly by studying fossil stem gnathostomes; however, preservation of soft anatomy is rare. We describe the only known example of a three-dimensionally mineralized heart, thick-walled stomach, and bilobed liver from arthrodire placoderms, stem gnathostomes from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation in Western Australia. The application of synchrotron and neutron microtomography to this material shows evidence of a flat S-shaped heart, which is well separated from the liver and other abdominal organs, and the absence of lungs. Arthrodires thus show the earliest phylogenetic evidence for repositioning of the gnathostome heart associated with the evolution of the complex neck region in jawed vertebrates.

The dentitions of extant fishes and land vertebrates vary in both pattern and type of tooth replacement. It has been argued that the common ancestral condition likely resembles the nonmarginal, radially arranged tooth files of arthrodires, an early group of armoured fishes. We used synchrotron microtomography to describe the fossil dentitions of so-called acanthothoracids, the most phylogenetically basal jawed vertebrates with teeth, belonging to the genera Radotina , Kosoraspis , and Tlamaspis (from the Early Devonian of the Czech Republic). Their dentitions differ fundamentally from those of arthrodires; they are marginal, carried by a cheekbone or a series of short dermal bones along the jaw edges, and teeth are added lingually as is the case in many chondrichthyans (cartilaginous fishes) and osteichthyans (bony fishes and tetrapods). We propose these characteristics as ancestral for all jawed vertebrates., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.)

Until now, all known fossils of tetrapods (limbed vertebrates with digits) and near-tetrapods (such as Elpistostege , Tiktaalik , and Panderichthys ) from the Devonian period have come from localities in tropical to subtropical paleolatitudes. Most are from Laurussia, a continent incorporating Europe, Greenland, and North America, with only one body fossil and one footprint locality from Australia representing the southern supercontinent Gondwana. Here we describe two previously unknown tetrapods from the Late Devonian (late Famennian) Gondwana locality of Waterloo Farm in South Africa, then located within the Antarctic Circle, which demonstrate that Devonian tetrapods were not restricted to warm environments and suggest that they may have been global in distribution., (Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.)

The discovery of Entelognathus revealed the presence of maxilla, premaxilla, and dentary, supposedly diagnostic osteichthyan bones, in a Silurian placoderm. However, the relationship between these marginal jaw bones and the gnathal plates of conventional placoderms, thought to represent the inner dental arcade, remains uncertain. Here we report a second Silurian maxillate placoderm, which bridges the gnathal and maxillate conditions. We propose that the maxilla, premaxilla, and dentary are homologous to the gnathal plates of placoderms and that all belong to the same dental arcade. The gnathal-maxillate transformation occurred concurrently in upper and lower jaws, predating the addition of infradentary bones to the lower jaw., (Copyright © 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

The transition from jawless to jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) resulted in the reconfiguration of the muscles and skeleton of the head, including the creation of a separate shoulder girdle with distinct neck muscles. We describe here the only known examples of preserved musculature from placoderms (extinct armored fishes), the phylogenetically most basal jawed vertebrates. Placoderms possess a regionalized muscular anatomy that differs radically from the musculature of extant sharks, which is often viewed as primitive for gnathostomes. The placoderm data suggest that neck musculature evolved together with a dermal joint between skull and shoulder girdle, not as part of a broadly flexible neck as in sharks, and that transverse abdominal muscles are an innovation of gnathostomes rather than of tetrapods.

Ichthyostega and Acanthostega are the earliest tetrapods known from multiple near-complete skeletons, with Acanthostega generally considered the more primitive. New material indicates differing ontogenetic trajectories for their forelimbs: In Ichthyostega, the pattern of muscle attachment processes on small humeri (upper arm bones) resembles that in "fish" members of the tetrapod stem group such as Tiktaalik, whereas large humeri approach (but fail to attain) the tetrapod crown-group condition; in Acanthostega, both small and large humeri exhibit the crown-group pattern. We infer that Ichthyostega underwent greater locomotory terrestrialization during ontogeny. The newly recognized primitive characteristics also suggest that Ichthyostega could be phylogenetically more basal than Acanthostega.