A well-preserved skull bone from a coelacanth that lived some 320 million years ago has come to light in Roundhay Park, Leeds. The specimen, the oldest coelacanth fossil yet found in the Yorkshire region, now rests in the natural sciences collection at Leeds Discovery Centre after its finder donated it to Leeds Museums and Galleries.
The discovery took place earlier this year during a reconnaissance walk by Ru Smith of the Yorkshire Geological Society. He was examining rock layers ahead of a planned field trip when he split open a piece of shale from a bed containing freshwater mussels known as Carbonicola. Inside lay a distinctive skull bone of a large fish. Smith recognised its importance immediately.
There’s a layer of rock in the park which dates from around 320 million years ago, from a time before the breakup of the continents, when what is now the park would have been situated close the Equator and under the warm waters of a tropical lagoon. West Central Africa would be a good place to find similar environments in the present. There’s a bed of freshwater mussels called Carbonicola at one level in the rock, and opening a piece of shale from this bed in my hands I saw something unusual – a distinctive skull bone of a large fish. I knew straight away this was something different and very rare.
At the time the creature died, the area formed part of the assembling supercontinent Pangaea. The lagoon teemed with life long before the familiar shapes of today's continents took hold. The exact site within the park has been withheld to safeguard the rock exposure for future professional geological work.
Coelacanths carry the label of living fossils with good reason. Scientists once thought the group vanished around the end of the dinosaur era until a living example turned up off South Africa in 1938. This Leeds fossil therefore joins a lineage that has endured for hundreds of millions of years.
The new specimen will sit alongside other notable Carboniferous finds at the Discovery Centre, including the finest known example of the giant fish Megalichthys recovered near Leeds in 1883. The centre itself functions as a modern storage facility and visitor attraction. Its collections support exhibitions, research, learning programmes and public tours. Entry operates on a give-what-you-can basis, with visits available by pre-booking.
Clare Brown, curator of natural sciences at Leeds Museums and Galleries, welcomed the donation. She noted how responsible collecting builds a clearer picture of prehistoric life beneath ordinary places.