This artist's reconstruction of the 70-million-year old giant suspension-feeding bony fish Bonnerichthys as it cruises through the seaway covering what is today Kansas. Researchers had believed that these prehistoric bony fish only existed for a short period of time, but newly examined fossils reveal that this group actually persisted for more than 100 million years during the Mesozoic. By reinterpreting old findings and analyzing new fossils, researchers found that the massive suspension feeders, which engulfed water with an open mouth and sieved food while water escaped through gill slits, lived from 170 to 65 million years ago. During that time, they pioneered the unique (and highly effective) filter-feeding strategies that can still be seen in the largest marine vertebrates living today.
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