Our early ancestors may have looked a bit less human and a lot more fishy, according to a recent jaw-dropping scientific discovery.

Through studies of 505-million-year-old fossils, scientists have been able to disprove the long-held theory that modern animals with bony skeletons evolved from shark-like creatures with cartilage frames.

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Instead, a two-inch ancient creature belongs to the lineage which later evolved into sharks, eels, and other fish, as well as birds, reptiles, and mammals similar to us.

The early vertebrae is termed Metaspriggina and has been a mystery to scientists for decades. However, a recent discovery of several Metaspriggina fossils in the Canadian Rockies have given scientists more complete and complex fossils to observe, allowing them to study the origin and evolution of the fishy creature.

The primordial fish has a complex arrangement of small skull and jaw bones and shows that a bony skeleton was the prototype for the evolution of modern bony frames, scientists stated.

Although the Metaspriggina didn't have any hard bones in its skeleton, experts believe that it grew a hard rod of cartilage, called a notochord, which ran the length of the body and kept it stiff. Modern-day fish have a similar block of muscles which they contract in order to help them swim quickly.

The new find marks a ground-breaking discovery and provides clues to how human features such as the eye sockets and the jaw formed and evolved.

"The implications are clear: ostheichthyans did not independently acquire their bony skeletons, they simply inherited them" from their ancestors -- heavily-armoured fish known as placoderms that are accepted to be the most primitive members of the jawed vertebrate family." Dr Brian Choo, from the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing, stated.

It seems we human are more closely related to Jaws and other fish friends and foes than we originally thought!

TagsFish ancestors, Jaws, Human evolution