Missing Link For Wonky-Eyed Fish Discovered

The face of a flounder, sole, halibut or other flatfish looks like a hodgepodge of mismatched puzzle pieces forced together, with eyes that don't seem to match one another nor the orientation of the animal's mouth.

This is because, as these fish mature, one eye migrates over the top of the fish's head, coming to rest above the other eye, so both are on the same side of the head. A new fossil discovery has shed light on how this strange trait came about.

Matt Friedman, a paleobiologist at University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, found a sort of flatfish missing link in a drawer of unidentified fish fossils in the Natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria.