[Rockhounds] Exceptional new fish fossil sparks a rethink of how Earth's geology drives evolution

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Coelacanths are deep-sea fish that live off the coasts of southern Africa
and Indonesia and can reach up to two meters in length. For a long time,
scientists believed they were extinct.

In new research <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51238-4> published
in *Nature Communications*, we reveal the best-preserved coelacanth fossil
ever found from the ancient period hundreds of millions of years ago when
these ancient sea-dwellers first evolved. The fossil comes from the Gogo
Formation on Gooniyandi Country in northern Western Australia.

We also studied the evolution of all the hundreds of coelacanth species we
know from the fossil record <https://phys.org/tags/fossil+record/> to find
out what drove the creation of new species
<https://phys.org/tags/new+species/> across the eons.

The answer came as a surprise: the greatest influence on coelacanth
evolution was not ocean temperature or oxygen levels but tectonic activity
<https://phys.org/tags/tectonic+activity/>. When the vast plates of Earth's
crust were moving around more, new species were more likely to appear.

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-exceptional-fish-fossil-rethink-earth.html