A prize catch

By Ego Guiotto, from A prize catch, AG 43 July–September 1996.

A CHANCE DISCOVERY by a road grader near Canowindra, NSW, in 1955 led to one of the world’s great fossil finds. The bulldozer overturned a slab of rock with strange impressions on its underside. The slab revealed dramatic evidence of a unique, mass mortality event around 360mya, in Late Devonian times, known as the Age of Fishes. Here (illustrated above), a lifeand-death struggle in the stagnant waters of a Late Devonian billabong draws to a dramatic close as Canowindra grossi, a large, lobe-finned crossopterygian fish, strikes. Powered by a strong-finned tail, this fierce 1.6m predator moves with electrifying speed to snatch a smaller Remigolepis walkeri, scattering a school of feeding armoured fish. This depiction of life in a billabong was based on the fossil evidence of the rock slab and includes an element of artistic licence with the colouring of the fish. A copy of Ego Guiotto’s illustration is now featured at the Age of Fishes Museum in Canowindra.