An amateur palaeontologist by the name of Stephanie Leco recently hit it big when she discovered the fossil of a rare fish during the summer.
According to The Budapest Report, Stephanie Leco was able to discover the jaw bone of a long-snouted fish known to have existed 220 million years ago. She made the rare fish fossil discovery during a dig for citizens last month at Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park, a park with a massive rainbow-colored desert and which has been known to routinely encounter fossils from the Jurassic age.
Leco discovered the rare fish fossil while reportedly examining loose dirt on an unproductive hillside in the national park. She was utilizing her knowledge in art to sift through colors, patterns and textures among the bones, rocks and charcoal during the dig for small objects. She already had a collection of several small teeth and had been observing a plant lizard found by another digger when she saw the jaw bone of the rare fish fossil.
Since she was unsure of the object's identity, she reportedly handed the rare fish fossil to the park's lead fossil preparer, Matt Smith.
"I don't know, that's why it's cool," he told Leco.
Reports say that the rare fish fossil is similar to the size of a human pinky. During the Late Triassic period, the area where Leco discovered the fossil was a lake or pond. The fish then was already thought to be extinct in North America.
According to park paleontologist Bill Parker, scientists already had knowledge of fish present in the world during the Early Triassic period, which was about 10 million years earlier, however they had only been spotted in China.
"People who actually study this group of fish might start setting their sights in our direction now," Parker said.
After making the discovery, Leco and Smith reportedly wrapped the rare fish fossil in a tin and took it to the lab where they were able to observe it closely. Later, the park told them in an email that it belongs to a species closely related to fish of the genus Saurichthys.
Leco, 26, said that she now has a deeper fascination with paleontology, adding that she already bought a couple of books regarding the Triassic period to study and provide her with more authority on the find.
According to Fox News, the late Triassic period started about 250 million years ago, lasting 50 million years. It was quickly followed by the largest known extinction of life on Earth, which was of the first dinosaurs.
The full jaw of the rare fish fossil is speculated to be about three to four times longer than what Leco was able to find, according to Parker. He added that other fossils of the fish might be found on the East Coast and on the Colorado Plateau as well, reported The Associated Press.
