British paleontologists accidentally discovered the remains of an ancient fish, the size of a great white shark, that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
According to Express, the discovery of scientists from the University of Portsmouth is a kind of so-called “living fossil” coelacanth.
These marine animals still swim in our seas, surviving the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The most surprising thing was that the discovery happened completely by accident. Professor David Martilla, a paleontologist at the University’s School of Environment, Geography and Geosciences, was asked to identify a large bone in a private collection in London.
The collector bought the specimen, believing that the bone was a fragment of a pterodactyl skull. Professor Martill was very surprised to find that it is not one bone, but many thin bone plates.
“Only one animal has such a structure, and this is the coelacanth“, – he said.
Experts estimate that it could be more than 5 m in length, making the relic significantly larger than the endangered modern coelacanth, whose maximum length is 2 m.
As reported by “Apostrophe”, on the banks of a reservoir in Singapore, local residents found a strange creature that scared them with its appearance – large jaws and sharp teeth resembled a prehistoric monster.
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