Multiple new species of ‘dwelling fossil’ fish discovered hiding in plain sight after greater than 150 years

The fashionable coelacanth is a well-known “living fossil,” lengthy thought to have died out, however first fished out of deep waters within the Indian Ocean in 1938. Since then, dozens of examples have been discovered, however their fossil historical past is patchy.

In a new study revealed within the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Jacob Quinn and colleagues from the University of Bristol and University of Uruguay in Montevideo have recognized coelacanths in museum collections that had been missed for 150 years.

The fossils recognized within the new work date from the very finish of the Triassic Period, some 200 million years in the past, when the U.Ok. lay at extra tropical latitudes.

“During his Masters in Paleobiology at Bristol, Jacob realized that many fossils previously assigned to the small marine reptile Pachystropheus actually came from coelacanth fishes,” says Professor Mike Benton, one among Quinn’s supervisors. “Many of the Pachystropheus and coelacanth fossils have uncanny similarities, but importantly, Jacob then went off to look at collections around the country, and he found the same mistake had been made many times.”

“It is remarkable that some of these specimens had been in museum storage facilities, and even on public display, since the late 1800s, and have seemingly been disregarded or identified as bones of lizards, mammals, and everything in-between,” stated Quinn. “From just four previous reports of coelacanths from the British Triassic, we now have over 50.”

Quinn made X-ray scans of many specimens to verify the identifications. The specimens largely belong to an extinct group of coelacanths, the Mawsoniidae, however are intently associated to the dwelling fish.

Co-author Pablo Toriño, a world skilled on coelacanths, situated in Uruguay, added, “Although the material we identify occurs as isolated specimens, we can see that they come from individuals of varying ages, sizes, and species, some of them up to one meter long, and suggesting a complex community at the time.”

“The coelacanth fossils all come from the area of Bristol and Mendip Hills, which in the Triassic was an archipelago of small islands in a shallow tropical sea,” stated co-supervisor Dr. David Whiteside.

“Like modern day coelacanths, these large fishes were likely opportunistic predators, lurking around the seafloor and eating anything they encountered, probably including these small Pachystropheus marine reptiles, which is ironic given their fossils have been confused with those of coelacanths for decades.”