Untangling Scotland's Century-Old Fossil Fish Mystery

The small, eel-like 'Paleospondylus gunni' fish has been a taxonomic troublemaker since its discovery in 1890. A recent paper proposes some answers about the prehistoric fish, with unexpected links to early tetrapod evolution.

By Connor Lynch
Jun 20, 2022 3:00 PMJun 20, 2022 3:30 PM
Illustration depicting a cycle of life in a lake during the Devonian Period
(Credit: Aunt Spray/Shutterstock)

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In the late 19th century, when Scottish physician and naturalist Ramsay Heatley Traquair first acquired specimens of a “strange little fossil vertebrate” from Achanarras Quarry in Caithness, Scotland, he likely had no idea that he would soon stumble on a mystery that would confound paleontologists for over a century.

“The comparatively few feet of rock exposed in this quarry afford a remarkable assemblage of fossil fishes,” he wrote in 1890. Among them was a tiny fish fossil that proved difficult to classify. He named it Paleospondylus gunni. Paleospondylus means ancient vertebrae in Greek, but gunni is an old Scottish term for a bugbear, or boogeyman. It’s been a boogeyman among paleontologists ever since (though often a dull one), with bizarre features that have defied easy classification.

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