Miners from, Lublin, eastern Poland, have found a fossilized fish, which experts date as being at least 230 million years old. 

“It is a unique discovery. So far we’ve found fossilized ammonites and fragments of fish here but not a whole fish,” says Stefan Karst, geologist from the Lublin mine. The fossil was found 600 metres underground.  

Over 250 million years ago the area where the copper mine is located was covered by a shallow tropical sea. Gradually the level of the sea reduced until it completely dried out.

“Everything that settled on the sea bed was preserved by layers of deposit from consecutive geological periods,” explains Pawel Raczynski from the Geology Institute at the University of Wroclaw.

Last week, paleontologists released news of tetrapod prints discovered in the Holy Cross Mountains of southeastern Poland, which proves that animals crawled out of water and on to land 18 million years earlier than was previous supposed. (mg/pg) 

Source: Gazeta Wroclawska