Mike's 390-million-year-old find (From Gazette & Herald)

Mike's 390-million-year-old find

EVERY fossil hunter's dream became reality for a local man when world experts said he had discovered a new species of ancient fish.

Mike Sanders, of Kirby Misperton, found the 390-million-year-old armoured fish embedded in stone in a quarry in Caithness in the very north of Scotland. It lived before there were any flowering plants, birds or mammals and when Caithness and was part of an inland sea.

The fish is a flat fish with a bony plated skin, spikes on its back and serrated front fins. It would have used the fins to drag itself out of water and may have been the ancient forerunner of a crocodile.

Dr Per Ahlberg of London's Natural History Museum, in association with experts at the University of St Petersburg and Australian Museum, Sydney, said in a letter that the fossil was of considerable importance.

Mike had sent another fossil to the museum for identification and enclosed a photograph of the fish fossil for interest. He was thrilled at the enthusiastic response from the museum's department of palaeontology.

In the letter Dr Ahlberg said: "Given that the Devonian fishes of Caithness have been the subject of intensive study ever since the 1830s, it is very unusual indeed to find a new species of placoderm turning up like this." He adds the specimen is of great scientific importance. "This specimen may be a pointer to a hitherto undiscovered fauna within the Caithness sequence."

When Mike got the fossil home after his trip to Scotland, he started to clean it but realised it was very delicate. He contacted the ichthyologist specialists at the Lapworth Museum in Birmingham who cleaned it and then put it on display at the museum without realising how very special it was.

"There is more chance of winning the lottery than finding a new species of this age," said Mike. "It came from a seam of rock one kilometre deep. Many fossil hunters had been at the site over the years and some had even dynamited the rock to break it up. My wife and I spent three days searching for fossils there and found several other fishes. I am so amazed and excited that this fish is a new species."

The fish now has to be properly named. "I have decided to name the fish after my wife," he said. "Now I can call her an old fossil. When I told her, she retorted that at least she was a perfect specimen."

Updated: 10:11 Wednesday, January 29, 2003