Scientists find “living fossil” fish hidden in museums for 150 years

Ancient Fossils from Britain's Tropical Past

The fossils uncovered in this study date back about 200 million years to the end of the Triassic Period, a time when what is now the United Kingdom was located in warmer, tropical latitudes.

"During his Masters in Palaeobiology at Bristol, Jacob realized that many fossils previously assigned to the small marine reptile Pachystropheus actually came from coelacanth fishes," explains Professor Mike Benton, one of Quinn's supervisors.

He adds, "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."

Forgotten Fossils Hidden in Plain Sight

Now an Honorary Research Associate in Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, Jacob Quinn said, "It is remarkable that some of these specimens had been sat 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, From just four previous reports of coelacanths from the British Triassic, we now have over fifty."

To confirm the reclassification, Quinn used X-ray imaging on multiple specimens. Most belong to an extinct family of coelacanths known as the Mawsoniidae, which are closely related to the modern species still living today.

Revealing a Prehistoric Underwater Community

Co-author Pablo Toriño, a coelacanth specialist based in Uruguay, explained, "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 1 metre long, and suggesting a complex community at the time."

Co-supervisor Dr. David Whiteside from the University of Bristol added, "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, 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."