A secret ‘extraordinary’ fossil spot in Wales contains preserved eyes and brains of 462-million-year-old creatures hidden amid a hoard of unknown species, a new study has revealed.
Last year, weird Fossils of Khatam al-Awsaj It’s been documented at a site called “Castlebank,” but new research is published May 1 in the journal nature and its evolution (Opens in a new tab) Describes the entire fossil deposit.
Hosting countless soft-bodied marine organisms and their organs, which are rarely preserved in the fossil record, the site resembles the world-famous Cambrian deposits of the Burgess Shale Layer in Canada and the Qingjiang Biome in China. However, the Castle Bank rocks are younger than 50 million years and give researchers a unique window into how soft life diversified in the Ordovician period (485.4 million to 443.8 million years ago), according to a statement from Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.
Researchers believe they have recovered more than 170 species from the site, most of which are new to science. These include what appear to be late examples of the Cambrian groups, incl The strangest wonders of evolution, and the nostril-nosed opabiniids, and early examples of the animals that evolved later, including barnacles, shrimp, and an unidentified six-legged insect-like creature. The rocks are also home to the fossilized digestive systems of trilobites and the eye and brain of an unknown arthropod, as well as preserved worms and sponges.
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“Every time we go back we find something new, sometimes something really extraordinary,” Joseph Botting (Opens in a new tab), independent researcher and honorary research fellow at Amgueddfa Cymru, in the statement. “There are a lot of unanswered questions, and this site will continue to produce new discoveries for decades.”
Bottom and co-author Lucy Muir (Opens in a new tab) They discovered the site near their home in Llandrindod Wells during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. The exact location is a secret to protect the site and at the request of the landowner, but the authors describe it as a small quarry within a sheep field.
The couple spent more than 100 days at the site, carefully excavating the fossils while watching the landowner’s sheep work. “Sheep seemed to find us interesting, not disturbing,” the authors wrote in a summary report accompanying the study.
Botting and Muir are independent researchers and were not employed as academics, so they crowdfunded the purchase of a microscope to study the fossils in more detail, many of which were at most 0.1 inch (3 mm) long, according to a statement from the pair. . Then they collaborated with an international team of colleagues to complete the newly published research.
The preserved ecosystem at Castle Bank may be a nursery for small animals, with only small examples of the more common trilobite species – called Ogyginus corndensis Found on the site. However, the study authors also note that, overall, the small size of the fossils was “astonishing” and may simply have been a feature of the animal community that lived there.
