Polish scientists have found the remains of more than a thousand specimens of extinct animals dating back to about 240 million years ago, including the bones of a reptile previously unknown to science, TVP World reported.
In Medary, near Tarnowski Gory (Upper Silesia), a team of scientists from the Faculty of Biology of the University of Warsaw, the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences made an extraordinary discovery. The researchers came across layers containing an unusually large number of animal bones dating back to about 240 million years ago.
"We are excavating the site of an abandoned brick factory. The red and green mud layers we are examining are dated to the Middle Triassic. This is a particularly important moment in the history of life on Earth, as many animal groups, such as mammals, reptiles and dinosaurs," says Dr. Lukasz Czepinski of the Polish Academy of Sciences, co-author of the study. "Medari records this pivotal moment in the prehistory of our planet," he added.
According to Dr. Czepinski, the discovery in Silesia is a "worldwide event." He explains that deposits from the Middle Triassic are very rare, and the nearest sites with fossils of a similar age are hundreds of kilometers from Medari.
During the Middle Triassic, the Earth looked very different than it does today. All the continents were connected in one supercontinent - Pangea. In its eastern part, the Tethys Ocean formed a huge gulf. The area being studied by the researchers in Medari was located in its southern part. In this vast lowland, the sea has come and gone several times in cycles lasting thousands of years.
"The animals we find in Medary are buried in sediments of marine origin," explains Wojciech Pawlak from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Warsaw, one of the authors of the publication.
Among the organisms whose remains have been found in Silesia are four species of small sharks. Researchers found fossils of bony fish in the mudstones. At the site, they found bones resembling a crocodilian amphibian called Mastodonsaurus, 6 meters long, as well as a fish-eating reptile, Tanystropheus, of similar size, with an extremely long neck consisting of 13 vertebrae. Its remains are concentrated in Medari in a quantity never seen anywhere else in the world. /BGNES
