Brazilian fossil found on remote Scots farm
IT’S a mystery that has experts across Scotland scratching their heads in disbelief.
A fossil belonging to an extinct Brazilian fish that existed 125 million years ago has been unearthed – in a remote field in Perthshire.
The prehistoric remains were discovered by sheer chance last month by two workers at a country estate, after a rock from a dry stone wall was cracked open by a trailer wheel.
And now one expert has identified the fossil as a long-extinct fish from north- eastern Brazil – more than 5600 miles away across the Atlantic ocean.
Mick Hardy and Ionel Obreja, who work as gardeners on a rural farming estate in Glenisla, made the discovery when they removed a rock from a loose wall to jam behind the wheel of a trailer, to stop it rolling backwards.
It was only when the wheel moved off the stone that they saw it had cracked open, revealing a pristine fossilised fish inside.
Ionel, 37, who first spotted the remains, said: “I had put the stone under the wheel of a trailer – just to wedge the trailer in place. When I went to put the stone back, it cracked and I saw the fossil.”
Mick, 66, added: “I’ve seen fossils before – but not one as complete as this, or as old. It was just a random discovery.
“I used to work down the coal mines in Derbyshire and we saw many fossils in the pits – but they were all imprints of leaves and vegetation.
“We never saw any animals – and that was 600m below the ground at the coal face.”
The baffling find was taken to Edinburgh shop Mr Wood’s Fossils by estate owner Euan Ivory.
And it was here that fossil expert Matt Dale identified it as a fish from the Santana Formation, an accumulation of prehistoric remains in the Araripe Basin of Ceara in Brazil.