'Polar' marine fossils of 465 million years found in central Spain
Friday, February 14, 2020 @ 7:28 PM
Rare marine fossils dating back around 465 million years have been found in a central Spain national park.
According to the ministry of environment and energy transition – led by one of the four deputy presidents, Teresa Ribera – the fossils are of a cephalopod, a family which includes the squid, and have turned up hundreds of kilometres from the nearest sea.
They were located by scientists working in the Cabañeros National Park, which sits across the borders of the provinces of Toledo and Ciudad Real, in Castilla-La Mancha.
The site has been key in naming the fossils – the mysterious prehistoric sea creature has been baptised as the Cabaneroceras Aznari.
As for the Aznari part, there is no link to Spain's former PP president José María Aznar, who ruled until 2004 – it comes from the owner of the land in the village of Horcajo de los Montes (Ciudad Real province) where the fossils were found, Alejandro Aznar.
It is believed to have lived in the now-disappeared sea platforms in what was originally one of the planet's two continents, Gondwanaland – the other being Laurasia – and belong to a rare group of intejocerids, a type of cephalopod originally thought to have only lived in paleotropical zones.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com