Cape Town - Researchers studying fossils near Makhanda (Grahamstown) have unearthed and described in their latest paper a giant 360 million-year-old killer fish species with fangs that likely preyed on humans’ ancestors.
The researchers call it Hyneria udlezinye or “one who consumes others” in Xhosa.
The new fish, which belonged to an extinct group of lobe-finned fish called the tristichopterids was close to 3m long and considered the biggest prehistoric bony fish ever discovered in the southern African region from the Late Devonian period, 383 million to 359 million years ago – before dinosaurs were discovered.
The fossil of this gigantic killer fish species was unearthed in the
Waterloo Farm locality of South Africa near Makhanda and existed on the Gondwana continent now recognised as Africa, South America, Antarctica, India, Madagascar and Australia.
The paper titled, “A high latitude Gondwanan species of the Late Devonian
tristichopterid Hyneria (Osteichthyes: Sarcopterygii)” was authored by Rob Gess, palaeontologist and research associate of the Albany Museum, and Per Ahlberg, a researcher and professor in organismal biology at Uppsala University in Sweden.
The authors said: “It had rows of sharp teeth and fangs and would have eaten most of the larger kinds of fish and the tetrapods found at Waterloo Farm. Fish at Waterloo Farm include many kinds of extinct armour-plated (Placoderm) fish, extinct spiny-finned fish, and other lobe-finned fish, including coelacanths.”
The name “Hyneria” was the genus name of Hyneria linae, and “Udlezinye” was the name that they chose for the species because of its predatory nature, Gess said.
“We chose this name as it was the top predator in the more freshwater portion of the ecosystem, and would have consumed other fish, as well as the tetrapods,” Gess said.
In the mid-1990s, Gess spent a few years carrying out excavations at Waterloo Farm, he discovered the first bones from its skull.
Then, in 1999, further bones, including a scatter of head and shoulder girdle bones, came to light while rescuing 30 tons of shale from the cutting ahead of further roadworks.
Gess has been excavating these shale blocks on and off ever since, finding a bone from Hyneria every now and again.
“The latest bones included in the paper are from a partial jaw collected last year when I was splitting shale with one of my PhD students, Ryan Nel, and he split open the block containing it.
“So it’s a giant puzzle, the pieces of which have been assembled over 30 years. In some cases we have several examples of certain bones from different individuals of the same species,” Gess said.
kristin.engel@inl.co.za