[Animals] Mangled 'dragon' fossils were cooked by ancient continents colliding to form Pangaea

[BirSaNN]

Warped amphibian-like fossils in Ireland were likely transformed by superheated fluids that were released as ancient continents crashed into one another around 300 million years ago.

Bizarre, mangled fossils in Ireland were likely deformed by superheated fluids that burst out from below Earth's crust around 300 million years ago. The superhot fluids were released when the planet's ancient continents collided together to form the supercontinent Pangaea, a new study shows.

The fossils, which mainly consist of a group of amphibian-like tetrapods in the genus Keraterpeton, were discovered in 1866 trapped within a layer of coal at the Jarrow Assemblage, a fossil site in County Kilkenny, southern Ireland. Keraterpeton were palm-size, salamander-shaped creatures with pointed, dragon-like horns, according to University College Cork(opens in new tab) in Ireland. The fossils date back to around 320 million years ago during the Carboniferous period (359 to 299 million years ago). 

The Jarrow Assemblage fossils all share a unique trait: They've been warped, and large sections of them have been replaced by the surrounding coal. This makes it very hard to distinguish the fossils from their surroundings and tell what the fossils originally looked like. The fossils also contain an unusually high amount of apatite crystals, or phosphate minerals that are found in the bones of most animals, as well as lots of volcanic rocks.

Until now, the leading theory on the misshaped fossils was that they were buried in acidic soil, which dissolved most of the bones and enabled coal to take their place. However, in the new study, published Dec. 7 in the journal Paleontology(opens in new tab), researchers analyzed the bones and discovered that the apatite within the bones likely formed 20 million years after the ancient amphibians died — around the time when a super continental smashup was forming Pangaea.

"When we look at the chemistry of apatite in the bones from Jarrow we find that this apatite was formed by heated fluids within the Earth," study co-author Gary O’Sullivan(opens in new tab), a paleogeologist at University College Dublin in Ireland, said in a statement(opens in new tab). These superhot fluids were likely released as the ancient continents were moving around and could have transformed the fossils into the warped remains we see today, he added. 

link: https://www.livescience.com/mangled-fossils-cooked-by-colliding-continents