An international team of scientists from Scotland, South Africa, Switzerland and Zimbabwe has discovered a new species of fossil lungfish that lived at the dawn of the age of dinosaurs, around 210 million years ago. The study was published in the scientific journal broadcasting Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (JVP).
Paleontologists made the discovery during excavations in the Middle Zambezi basin in northern Zimbabwe. The new species has been named Ferganoceratodus edwardsi. These creatures lived in the early Triassic period.
Lungfish are an unusual group of freshwater fish that have long attracted the attention of scientists.
They are considered the closest living relatives of four-limbed animals and help reveal how the ancestors of all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals came to be.
The earliest species are recognizably similar to their still-living relatives, so modern lungfish are often called “living fossils.”
According to the team, the fossil could be a missing link in the evolution of lungfish, as the findings also show that this animal species first appeared on the supercontinent Gondwana during the Early Triassic period and then spread to Africa and South America.
Earlier scientists opened A new species of little penguin that lived 24 million years ago.