The largest fossil of an extinct ancient deep-sea fish has recently been discovered – completely by mistake.
Paleontologists in the UK found what they were told was pterodactyl bone, but after closer examination, the team realized it was not a single bone.
The sample was identified as a thin bone of platelets belonging to coelacanth, a fish that first appeared 200 million years before the first dinosaurs and still swims around today.
One of the rarest things about coelacanth is that it has a skeletal lung, perhaps from a time when its ancestors moved ashore.
The researchers concluded that the fossil was coelacanth lung bones, which lived 66 million years ago.
Scientists have long believed that coelacanth died a long time ago, until a living human was seen in the waters off South Africa in the 1930s.
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Fossils of lungs belonging to 16-foot coelacanth, the largest recorded have been identified by paleontologists at the University of Plymouth. Pictured: Views of the coelacanth lung showing the overlying skeletal plates
David Martill, a paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth, was asked to identify a large bone purchased by a private collector, which was suspected to be part of a pterodactyls skull.
Martill quickly concluded that the fossil was made up of many thin plates ‘arranged like a barrel, but with the plates going around the place from top to bottom,’ he explained.
‘Only one animal has such a structure and that is the coelacanth,’ he said. ‘We had found the skeletal lungs of this amazing, amazing fish.’
The collector was disappointed that pterodactyl was not in his hands, but Martill and his colleagues were delighted with the findings.
The fossil as originally brought to Martill, rooted in phosphate and plaster and covered in lacquer. Because it was next to a pterosaur bone, its owner believes it was a pterodactyl skull.
The fossil (pictured) was found in phosphate deposits in Morocco, the first coelacanth ever found there
The fossil was found in phosphate deposits in Morocco, the first coelacanth ever discovered there.
It was found next to pterodactyl, which dates back to Cretaceous times – about 66 million years ago – and explained the collector’s misunderstanding.
Marine biologists only discovered the deep-sea fish whose lungs lay in his abdomen in 2015.
Millions of years ago, ancestors apparently used the breath coelacanth.
That could explain how he survived the event that became extinct 66 million years ago to destroy the non-bird dinosaurs and most other life from Earth, as well as those coelacanths that lived in shallow waters.
Where the bony lung was likely to be on the body of the fish when it was alive
This lung belonged to a ‘very large’ coelacanth, Martill said, perhaps 16 feet or longer.
In contrast, the great white shark is about 15 feet long – and today’s coelacanths only grow to about six and a half feet.
‘This particular fish was huge – a little longer than a standing paddle board and probably the largest coelacanth ever found,’ said Martill.
Modern coelacanths grow to about six and a half feet. Pictured: Taxis install coelacanth in a tank at the National Museum of Natural History
Paleontologists had believed that the fish died out in the late Mesozoic era until live coelacanth was discovered in South Africa in 1938. Pictured: complete coelacanth fossil
The fossil was fixed in phosphate and plaster and covered in lacquer, turning it brown.
Martill’s team had to cut the remnants of the lung off the main slab and remove the lacquer with dental tools and fine brushes.
The bony lung was sent back to Morocco to be added to the collections at Hassan II University in Casablanca.
The coelacanth first appeared 400 million years ago – 200 million years before the first dinosaurs – and survived the extinct event that killed the dinosaurs.
He was long believed to have died near the end of the Mesozoic era, but in 1938 live coelacanth was discovered off the coast of South Africa.
Since then, a few other individual fish have been found, as well as members of a related species off the coast of Indonesia.
But the coelacanth, which is considered endangered, is a truly unique creature in many ways.
For example, it has ‘lobe-shaped’ wings that move in a different pattern, like a four-legged terrestrial animal.
This move has led experts to speculate that it may have been a member of a group of fish that first entered land that evolved into animals with legs.
Gray-brown fish can weigh up to 200 pounds and live for up to 60 years.
It has an empty, fluid-filled spine, enameled teeth, and a curved hook that allows it to open its mouth to swallow large prey.
Little is known about how the fish live, what it eats, how it reproduces, or how many are left.
Until recently the coelacanth was known as the ‘living fossil’, and has not changed much in the hundreds of millions of years. Scientists now believe it has evolved more than previously thought.