Imagine a lush and vibrant rainforest teeming with life, with various insects crawling and flying around, and abundant aquatic fauna. This is what the now cool, temperate Central Tablelands in southwestern Australia would have looked like around 15 million years ago.
This was confirmed by a spectacular recent discovery at the McGrath Flat fossil site near Gulgong in New South Wales, Australia. The site is classified as a "Lagerstätte" — a location that contains fossils of exceptional quality with remarkable detail.
Professor Jochen Brocks, a researcher from the Australian National University, not only discovered a new ancient fish species, Ferruaspis brocksi (named after him), but also made a remarkable find. The fossil’s extraordinary preservation offers a wealth of information about the species, allowing paleobiologists to reconstruct the flora and fauna of the past. The findings were published by the Australian Museum Research Institute, Sydney, in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
