Fossils provide unique clues about how the ecology of groups of organisms have changed over time. EARTH alum and postdoc at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Alessio Capobianco (PhD 2021), recently named a new species of bonytongue fish from Morocco along with Samir Zouhri (Hassan II University of Casablanca) and EARTH Professor Matt Friedman. This 50-million-year-old fossil comes from marine rocks, pointing to the ocean-going ways of early members of a lineage that only lives in freshwater settings today. You can examine a virtual model of the fossil, called Macroprosopon hiltoni, on the Museum of Paleontology's UMORF site.

To read the full paper published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, click here.