A genus of extinct armored fish (agnathans) from the Paleozoic Era, roughly 400 million years old.
A scientific genus name derived from Birken, a location where fossils were found, using the Latinized '-ia' suffix standard in taxonomic nomenclature.
Birkenia fossils show us that some of Earth's earliest vertebrates had no jaws—they were bottom-feeders with sucker mouths, revealing that the evolution of jaws was one of biology's most radical innovations.
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