A fossil hunter walking along a beach in Wales has helped scientists solve a 200-million-year-old mystery about prehistoric fish. In the spring of 2012, Jonathan Bow was walking along the coast in the Vale of Glamorgan at low tide when he found an unusual fossil jaw. At first, he hoped it was a tiny new species of crocodile, but experts were unsure what creature it came from for many years.
In 2022, lead researcher Jacob Quinn from the University of Bristol visited Mr Bow to inspect his collection. She worked with scientists from Museum Wales and the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart to study the jaw in detail. They discovered that it belonged to Saurichthys, a fast predatory fish that lived in shallow tropical seas around 200 million years ago.
This fossil is the very first bone from a Saurichthys ever found in these British rocks. For nearly 200 years, experts had been confused by individual teeth in museum collections across Europe, often mistaking them for ancient amphibians. By comparing the new jaw with existing museum specimens, the research team proved that these fossils actually belonged to two separate species of ancient fish.
The discovery resulted in a new scientific paper that clears up a long-standing historical confusion. Although Mr Bow was originally hoping for a new crocodile species, he said it felt good to contribute to science and help solve a mystery that had puzzled researchers for generations.