Paleontologists discovered fish fossils in New South Wales, Australia, which have been dated back 15 million years ago and still retained their last meal in their stomach, during an excavation in mid-March.
“The discovery of the 15 million-year-old freshwater fish fossil offers us an unprecedented opportunity to understand Australia’s ancient ecosystems,” Dr. McCurry, the lead scientist of the excavation and a paleontologist at the University of South Wales, said in a March 17 report published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The McGrath’s Flat, an archaeological site, held several fossils of the fish species, Ferruaspis Brocksi, and can be classified similarly to the modern-day smelt that is commonly found in the Great Lake regions but can also be seen in Australian freshwater or marine environments.
With the discovery of the species, scientists can now properly develop a timeline surrounding the arrival of the fish in Australia and its evolution since then. Seeing the contents of the fish’s stomachs also allows scientists to understand the behavior of the fish and better piece together the food web. The fish were small and silvery, having light underbellies and a dark upper body.
Australia’s once tropical rainforest
Millions of years ago, Australia once had a tropical wet rainforest, and the ecosystem had rich and abundant diversity. However, the land faced a sudden and drastic change in climate, causing the climate to gradually become more arid. The once diverse rainforest ecosystem shrunk to the dry shrubland and desert that is modern-day Australia.
The Ferruaspis Brocksi is under the classification of Osmeriformes, during the Miocene Epoch period. The species was named after two different objectives: one from its location and the second was to celebrate the finding with the name of one of the researchers.
The fossils were found within an iron-rich rock, developing its name “Ferru” from the Latin word Ferrum meaning iron, and “Brocksi” was named after the professeur Jochen J. Brocks of the Australian National University.
This article was originally published at www.jpost.com
