{"id":226688,"date":"2026-01-04T09:55:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T09:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/226688\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T09:55:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T09:55:21","slug":"coelacanth-fish-had-undiscovered-relatives-200-million-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/226688\/","title":{"rendered":"Coelacanth fish had undiscovered relatives 200-million years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

In museum collections across southwest England, scientists have uncovered coelacanths, ancient lobe-finned<\/a> fishes that swam with early dinosaurs about 200 million years ago.<\/p>\n

For decades, many of these bones sat in drawers labeled as small marine reptiles, even though they actually belonged to large predatory fish.<\/p>\n


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A new study of old specimens now shows that British Triassic rocks hosted a surprisingly rich community of these ancient fish.<\/p>\n

Misidentified fossils reexamined<\/p>\n

By reexamining bones long attributed to the marine reptile Pachystropheus<\/a>, researchers boosted Britain\u2019s Triassic coelacanth record from four examples to more than 50 fossils from the Bristol area.<\/p>\n

The work was led by Jacob Quinn, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol<\/a> who studies how fossil fish communities change over time.<\/p>\n

The team realized that many fossils once assigned to the small marine reptile Pachystropheus actually came from coelacanth fishes.<\/p>\n

The team noted that Pachystropheus and coelacanth fossils have striking similarities, and further checks of collections around the country revealed that the same misidentification had occurred many times.<\/p>\n

Coelacanths have a long fossil history that stretches back more than 400 million years and includes about 175 species in seas and lakes.<\/p>\n

The Devonian, a period starting more than 400 million years ago, marks the first clear appearance of coelacanths in the fossil<\/a> record, though many lineages later vanished in multiple extinction events.<\/p>\n

Today, the only living genus of coelacanth, Latimeria, includes two species known from deep waters off eastern Africa and Indonesia.<\/p>\n

The group was rediscovered in 1938 when South African fishing nets hauled in a fish that a museum curator recognized as a living coelacanth.<\/p>\n

Missing chapter in Triassic history<\/p>\n

Until this reassessment, late Triassic coelacanth remains from Britain were known from a handful of isolated bones, leaving their local story frustratingly incomplete.<\/p>\n

The Triassic, a period more than 200 million years ago, saw Earth recovering from an extinction and setting the stage for dinosaurs and mammals.<\/p>\n

The coelocanth fossils<\/a> described here come from the Rhaetian, the final Triassic slice, when shallow seas flooded low-lying coastal plains around southwest Britain.<\/p>\n

At the time, the Bristol region formed a patchwork of islands in a shallow sea, providing habitats where coelacanths, reptiles, and fishes could thrive.<\/p>\n

What the late Triassic seas looked like<\/p>\n

The remains come from bone beds in shales that record a shallow continental shelf where storms stirred the seafloor and concentrated skeletons into layers.<\/p>\n

The same layers that preserved the coelacanth bones<\/a> also contain sharks, bony fishes, marine reptiles, and the occasional remains of dinosaurs and other land animals that were carried in from shore.<\/p>\n

Fossil spores and plankton in the mud hint at a nearshore setting with pulses of freshwater flowing in, though the environment was still broadly marine.<\/p>\n

Those conditions suit coelacanth families that preferred brackish shallows or deeper offshore water, which helps explain why several lineages appear together in these beds.<\/p>\n

Seeing inside stones<\/p>\n

To separate fish bones from reptile bones, the team used micro CT, very high-resolution X-ray scanning, to reveal canals and joint surfaces without damaging the fossils<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Inside key skull bones, they traced nerve canals and cartilage-covered surfaces that match those of known coelacanths from other regions.<\/p>\n

The scans let the team build digital models so they could compare the Bristol bones with complete skeletons described from other continents.<\/p>\n

Features such as braincase joints, the pattern of sensory canals, and the form of jaw bones are diagnostic for coelacanth groups.<\/p>\n

Most of the Bristol bones match the family Mawsoniidae, a group of coelacanths that usually lived in shallow, brackish waters instead of the deep sea.<\/p>\n

A smaller set of bones seems closer to the family Latimeriidae, the line that ultimately includes the living, deep-water coelacanth Latimeria.<\/p>\n

Judging from jaw and shoulder bones<\/a>, the animals ranged from juveniles to adults of about 3.3 feet I1 meter) long.<\/p>\n

Shapes of skull roof, jaw, and shoulder bones suggest more than one species shared these habitats, though the team cannot yet name them.<\/p>\n

Reconstructing coelacanth family tree<\/p>\n

Taken together, the mix of sizes and bone types hints at a coelacanth community with juveniles, subadults, and adults using this coastal zone.<\/p>\n

This pattern may mean the area functioned as a feeding ground or nursery, where coelacanths returned repeatedly across generations.<\/p>\n

Many coelacanth bones<\/a> were found alongside fossils of the long-bodied marine reptile Pachystropheus. This suggests that these animals frequently used the same seafloor neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Based on comparisons with living coelacanths, the Bristol fish were opportunistic predators that cruised near the seafloor and snapped animals, possibly including Pachystropheus.<\/p>\n

What this reveals about coelacanth evolution<\/p>\n

The Bristol mawsoniid fossils<\/a> strengthen the view that this family flourished before Jurassic times in waters near Europe, rather than only off southern continents.<\/p>\n

The Bristol material reflects a pattern in which coelacanths changed rapidly early on, then kept similar body designs for many millions of years.<\/p>\n

Against that backdrop, Latimeria \u2013 as the last coelacanth genus \u2013 looks like one surviving branch of a lineage that has weathered many environmental changes.<\/p>\n

Studies of their skeletons show that, even while their outline stayed familiar, details of skull shape, fin structure, and sensory systems kept evolving.<\/p>\n

Why museum collections still matter<\/p>\n

Many of the Bristol coelacanth bones were collected in the 1800s, when they were logged as reptile or mammal fragments and stored away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is remarkable that some of these specimens had been sitting in museum storage facilities, and even on public display,\u201d said Quinn.<\/p>\n

The work hints that many museum drawers of misassigned bones<\/a> around the world may still hide pieces of deep history.<\/p>\n

As imaging techniques improve, specimens collected generations ago can yield fresh anatomical data and ecological clues without leaving their storage trays.<\/p>\n

Coelacanth mysteries remain<\/p>\n

For now, the Bristol coelacanths remain known only from isolated bones. This means that scientists cannot say how many species existed or what full skeletons looked like.<\/p>\n

New finds from Triassic rocks could reveal complete coelacanth skeletons and show whether the Bristol bones represent known groups or separate branches.<\/p>\n

The study also raises questions about how these fishes used coastal habitats just before the end Triassic mass extinction.<\/p>\n

For the fish that outlived the dinosaurs, these English fossils<\/a> add a chapter that stretches from ancient island seas to modern deep ocean coasts.<\/p>\n

The study is published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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