Scientists Discovered a Fossil Hiding in a Museum All Along, and It Revealed Two Ancient Predators Instead of One

A new study has uncovered how strange amphibians that once lived in north-western Western Australia became early evolutionary success stories after the most catastrophic mass extinction in Earth’s history. Fossils from the Kimberley region show that these animals rapidly diversified and spread across the globe in the aftermath of the end-Permian crisis.

The research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, revisits fossils first discovered in the 1960s in the Blina Shale on Noonkanbah Station, about 250 kilometers inland from Broome. These remains date back roughly 250 million years to the Early Triassic, when the region was not dry and rugged, but a brackish mudflat along a shallow bay.

Fossils Lost for Decades, Then Found Again

The species originally identified from Noonkanbah Station was named Erythrobatrachus noonkanbahensis in 1972 by researchers Cosgriff and Garbutt. According to the study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the designation was based on three fossil skull fragments collected during field expeditions in the 1960s.

Those specimens were later distributed among museum collections in Australia and the United States. Over time, they were lost. A high-quality plaster cast of one skull fragment remained at the Western Australian Museum, but the original material seemed gone.

The breakthrough came when one of the missing skull pieces resurfaced in a museum collection at Berkeley in the United States. With two original fragments finally available for examination, researchers were able to reassess the material directly rather than relying solely on casts.

One Species Becomes Two

Close analysis of the two skull fragments revealed they did not belong to a single species. As explained by the authors of the study, one specimen retained the name Erythrobatrachus, while the other matched a previously described temnospondyl known as Aphaneramma.

Both animals had skulls measuring about 40 centimeters when complete. Their shapes, though, told different ecological stories. Erythrobatrachus possessed a broader, more robust skull, indicating it likely functioned as a top predator in its environment. Aphaneramma had a long, narrow snout, probably adapted for catching small fish.

The findings show that these two amphibians coexisted in the same brackish habitat but targeted different prey. This separation of feeding strategies allowed them to occupy distinct ecological roles within the same ecosystem.

Life Goes Global After the Great Dying

Temnospondyls represent one of the longest-ranging vertebrate lineages in the fossil record, spanning about 210 million years from the Carboniferous to the Cretaceous. They survived both the end-Permian and end-Triassic mass extinctions.

The family Trematosauria, to which both Erythrobatrachus and Aphaneramma belong, appears to have tolerated saltwater conditions. As noted in the latest research:

“Tetrapods emerged as dominant marine predators during the earliest Triassic, with trematosaurid temnospondyls representing one of the first groups to radiate globally after the cataclysmic end-Permian mass extinction. “

Fossils of Aphaneramma have been identified in Svalbard, Russia, Pakistan and Madagascar, in rocks dating to less than one million years after the end-Permian extinction, often called the Great Dying. The confirmation of its presence in Australia demonstrates that these animals dispersed widely during the earliest phase of the Mesozoic Era.

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