Lamprey

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In News

• Chinese paleontologists have discovered two new species of lamprey from fossils considered 160 million years old.
• The two species were discovered in a fossil bed in North China.
• The two species discovered in China were not simply sucking blood but were scooping out flesh from their prey.
• Their bite was so powerful that it could even crack their prey’s skeleton.

Lamprey

• Lampreys are an ancient lineage of jawless fish of the order Petromyzontiformes.
• The adult lamprey are characterized by a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth.
• The oldest fossils of stem-group lampreys are from the latest Devonian, around 360 million years ago.
• Modern lampreys spend the majority of their life in the juvenile "ammocoete" stage, where they burrow into the sediment and filter feed.
• Adult carnivorous lampreys feed by boring into the flesh of other fish to consume flesh and/or blood.
• Lampreys live mostly in coastal and fresh waters and are found in most temperate regions.
• Lamprey distribution may be adversely affected by river habitat loss, overfishing, and pollution.

Range

• Sea Lampreys range throughout the eastern United States and western Europe coasts, as well as the Great Lakes.
• They have remained largely unchanged for more than 340 million years, since the Paleozoic Era, and survived through at least four major extinction events.