The Dawn of fish——for the cover story of the journal Nature

Most of the animals we know, including ourselves, are jawed vertebrates. Due to the large gap in their fossil record, we are not sure what do the earliest jawed vertebrates look like, how big are they, and what they eat.  In 2022, a team of scientists reported their latest discoveries in the early Silurian of Chongqing ,China, including five species of fishes new to science. These fishes from 435 million years ago have significant impact on our understanding of how jawed vertebrates originated and flourished. We work closely with the team of scientists to bring this “Silurian Aquarium” back to life, from the siltstone slates that “coffined” them. Five fishes, including the completely preserved armoured jawed fish, the shark ancestor and the jawless fish, and the two “spiny sharks” known only from scattered fossils, were meticulously reconstructed and put into the underwater environment, in the CG animation. Our rendering of the 3d reconstructions were used as the cover art of the prestigious journal Nature, and major popular science media such as National Geographic.