{"id":430223,"date":"2025-09-17T02:45:28","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T02:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/430223\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T02:45:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T02:45:28","slug":"new-species-of-living-fossil-fish-found-hiding-in-plain-sight-after-150-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/430223\/","title":{"rendered":"New Species of \u201cLiving Fossil\u201d Fish Found Hiding in Plain Sight After 150 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"Reconstruction<\/a>Reconstruction of a large mawsoniid coelacanth from the British Rhaetian. Credit: Daniel Phillips<\/p>\n

Researchers found dozens of Triassic coelacanth fossils in UK museums. The fish were once mistaken for reptile bones.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The coelacanth is often called a \u201cliving fossil.\u201d Once believed to have vanished millions of years ago, it was unexpectedly rediscovered in 1938 when one was caught in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n

Since then, several more specimens have been documented, yet their fossil record has remained incomplete. In a recent study, Jacob Quinn and his collaborators from the University of Bristol and the University of Uruguay uncovered coelacanth fossils in museum collections that had gone unnoticed for over 150 years.<\/p>\n

Fossils from the Triassic seas<\/p>\n

The newly identified specimens date to the closing stages of the Triassic Period, around 200 million years ago, when the region that is now the UK was positioned in more tropical latitudes.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring his Master\u2019s in Palaeobiology at Bristol, Jacob realised that many fossils previously assigned to the small marine reptile Pachystropheus actually came from coelacanth fishes,\u201d said Professor Mike Benton, one of Jacob\u2019s supervisors. \u201cMany 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Comparison<\/a>Comparison between clavicles (collar bones) from (A) the British Triassic and (B) the largest known coelacanth, Mawsonia gigas, from the Cretaceous of Brazil. Credit: University of Bristol<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d said Jacob. He continued \u201cfrom just four previous reports of coelacanths from the British Triassic, we now have over fifty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob made X-ray scans of many specimens to confirm the identifications. The specimens mostly belong to an extinct group of coelacanths, the Mawsoniidae, but are closely related to the living fish.<\/p>\n

Insights into ancient ecosystems<\/p>\n

Co-author Pablo Tori\u00f1o, a world expert on coelacanths, located in Uruguay, added, \u201cAlthough 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 metre long, and suggesting a complex community at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d said co-supervisor Dr David Whiteside. \u201cLike 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cCoelacanthiform fishes of the British Rhaetian\u201d by Jacob G. Quinn, David I. Whiteside, Pablo Tori\u00f1o, Evangelos R. Matheau-Raven and Michael J. Benton, 7 September 2025, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
DOI:<\/a>10.1080\/02724634.2025.2520921<\/a><\/p>\n

Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reconstruction of a large mawsoniid coelacanth from the British Rhaetian. Credit: Daniel Phillips Researchers found dozens of Triassic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[21479,32962,3925,70,16,15,25179],"class_list":{"0":"post-430223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-evolutionary-biology","9":"tag-fossils","10":"tag-paleontology","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-university-of-bristol"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115217349003598170","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}