According to foreign media reports, a stumbling fossil of a multi-bone lung reveals a huge ancient fish. The fossil remains of the fish, which grew the size of a great white shark, were discovered by accident and are the largest of its kind ever discovered.
A complete fossil of coelacanth
Scientists from the University of Portsmouth have discovered a species of coelacanth called a "living fossil" that survived the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and still lives in the ocean.
This discovery was purely accidental. Professor David Martill, a paleontologist in the university's School of Environment, Geography and Earth Sciences, was asked to identify a large bone from a private collection in London.
Collectors bought the specimen and thought the bone might be part of the pterodactyl skull. Professor Martel was surprised to find, however, that it was not actually a single bone but made up of many thin bone plates. Professor Martill said that only one animal with this peculiar structure has , the coelacanth fish.
Coelacanth ossified lungs
"The collector was very disappointed that he didn't have a pterygic skull, but my colleagues and I were very excited because coelacanths had never been found in phosphate deposits in Morocco, and this sample was absolutely significant!" Martill said.
Professor Martill collaborated with Dr. Paulo Brito of the State University of Rio de Janeiro in Rio de Janeiro, a renowned Paleontologist in Brazil, to identify the fossil. Dr. Brito, who has been studying coelacanths for more than 20 years and is an expert on the lungs of coelacanths, was surprised by the size of the new specimen.
The fossil was embedded in a piece of phosphate, with a plaster on the back and a layer of paint on the surface, which turned the bone brown. It was found next to a pterodactyl, which proves it lived in the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago.
Professor Martill and his colleagues were able to determine that they had found an astonishing echinococcum because the size of the lungs was abnormal. They calculated that it might be 5 meters long, much larger than the rare and endangered coelacanth, which is currently only 2 meters long.
Coelacanths first appeared 400 million years ago, 200 million years before the first dinosaurs. It has long been thought that the coelacanth is extinct, but in 1938 a live coelacanth was discovered in south African waters.
Now, the fossil is being returned to Morocco, where it will become a collection of the Department of Geology at The University of Hassan II in Casablanca.