Rare fish fossils get 3D makeover
THE first three-dimensional models of a rare 360-million-year-old armourfish have been painstakingly reconstructed by a renowned Grahamstown paleontologist, more than 20 years after he found the first fragments on the outskirts of town.
Although armour-plated fish, called placoderms, are commonly found in Devonian period rocks around the world, Africanaspis is a genus only found in the Waterloo Farm fossil treasure trove – recovered next to the busy N2 on the outskirts of town.
Fossil expert Dr Rob Gess, who has unearthed hundreds of fossils from the Waterloo site since he started digging there in the ’80s, yesterday said that a second species of the spiky armoured fish ( Africanaspis edmontaini) was the 17th new species described from fossils he has found there.
Analysis of important new, more complete specimens collected since Africanaspis doryssa was described in the ’90s, was published on April 5 in the Plos One journal.
The paper by Gess of the Albany Museum and Rhodes University, together with Australian colleague, Professor Kate Trinajstic of Curtin University described the new species and redescribed the original species as complete three-dimensional creatures.
Gess yesterday revealed that he had also given the plasticene and paper models he had made, and drawings from the paper, to local artist Anton Brink who has painted a lifelike rendition of the two fish.
Africanaspis doryssa was first named in 1997 by colleagues and Gess after he had found three unique trunk armour plates of a fish in the roadside shale.
His ongoing excavation over the years has revealed evidence for the entire head and trunk armour of Africanaspis doryssa and the whole trunk armour of more robust Africanaspis edmountaini.
Like a three-dimensional jigsaw, paper reproductions of the plates were fitted together revealing an “extraordinary” fish.
“In several specimens there are also compressions preserved of the unarmoured tails that protruded from behind the armoured bodies,” Gess said.
“This soft, unarmoured portion of the body is completely unknown in the vast majority of armour-plated fish,” he added.
Fossils from both species come in a range of sizes from less than 3cm to 30cm indicating they lived their entire life around the coastal lagoon.