A roughly 180-million-year-old fish fossil that is exceptionally well preserved in three dimensions was recently found in an Early Jurassic fossil bed discovered on a British farm, reports LiveScience.
A team of archaeologists led by paleontologists Neville and Sally Hollingworth discovered more than 180 Toarcian (183-174 million year ago) fossils behind a Gloucestershire farm cowshed, including remains of fish, Mesozoic marine reptiles dubbed “ichthyosaurs”. are known, and squid, insects and other animals of the time. However, one of the most important specimens was a fish whose head was preserved in three dimensions.
The fossil, which belonged to a specimen of Pachycormus, an extinct genus of fish, was discovered embedded in a nodule of hardened limestone protruding from the clay, and most interestingly, it contained soft tissue, including scales and an eye, and according to the researchers, it is unprecedented. “The eyeball and socket were well preserved. They usually lie flat in fossils. But in this case, they were preserved in more than one dimension, and it looks like the fish is jumping off the rock,” he told Neville Hollingworth to Live Science.
Impressed by the find, the archaeologists shared the specimen with ThinkSee3D, a company that creates 3D digital models of fossils for researchers around the world to take a closer look at through interactive reconstruction.
It should be noted that the fossils were found in such good condition because that region of the country was completely submerged by a shallow tropical sea and the sediments likely helped preserve them. As Dean Lomax, team member and paleontologist from the University of Manchester, explains: “When the fish died, they went to the bottom of the sea”, but their remains were unaffected as they “must have been quickly buried under the sediment”.
Some of the fossils are reportedly on display at a local museum while researchers continue to study their finds and are already working to publish the results. (Text and photos: RT in Spanish)