Several new types of Coelacants that lived at the end of the Triasi period, about 200 million years ago, have been identified from the museum samples that were discovered more than 150 years ago in the United Kingdom.
Artist rebuilding a large colacanth from Mawsoniid from the British Rhaetian. Credit image: Daniel Phillips.
Coelacanths is a unique fish that appeared for the first time in the fossil registry in the early Devonian era, about 419 million years ago.
More than 175 types of fossil Coelacanth fossils are known from all over the ancient and zosy ages.
During the mediator, it varied greatly, with some species to develop unusual body shapes.
However, at the end of the Cretaceous era, about 66 million years ago, they disappeared in mysterious circumstances of the fossil record.
Coelacants was supposed to be washed away as a bringing to the event of a terminal extinction. But in 1938, the first sample of live species Latimeria Chalumnae He was fortunately arrested in South Africa.
“Our team realized that many of the previously specified excavations for small sea reptiles Pachystropheus “It has already come from Coelacanth fish.
“Many of Pachystropheus They have Coelacanth fossils as strange similarities, but it is important, then we went to look at groups throughout the country, and we found that the same mistake was made several times. “
The University of Bristol, Jacob Quinn, the main author of the study, said, “
“Of only four previous reports on Coelacanths from British trays, we now have more than fifty.”
Excavators have performed X -ray scannings for many samples to confirm the definitions.
Samples often belong to a extinct group of Coelacanths, MawsoniIDAE, but are closely related to live fish.
“Although the material we define occurs as isolated eyes, we can see that it comes from individuals of different ages, sizes, and species, some of which reach one meter, and suggests a complex society at that time,” said Universa de la Riplika de Uruguay Pablo Torneo, composed of degree.
“All Coeracanth fossils come from the Bristol and Mendip Hills, which was in the trays an archipelago of small islands in a shallow tropical sea,” said Dr. David Whitsid, a fossil scientist at the University of Bristol.
“Like colacanths in the modern era, these large fish are likely to be opportunistic, lurking around the sea bottom and eating anything they faced, perhaps including this small Pachystropheus Sea reptiles, which are ridiculous given that their fossils have been confused with those in Coelacanths for decades. “
the Ticket Appear Vertebrate Magazine Magazine.
_____
Jacob Quinn And others. 2025. Vertebrate Magazine Magazine 45: e2520921; Doi: 10.1080/02724634.2025.2520921