Latest news with #MelinaJobbins
CBC
14 hours ago
- Science
- CBC
Move over, Jurassic Park. Manitoba was home to newly discovered 390-million-year-old extinct fish
On a warm, sunny July day, paleontologist Melina Jobbins and her team search an old rock quarry near Lundar, Man., for 390-million-year-old fossils of an extinct fish that swam in what was once a vast inland sea. Jobbins, a postdoctoral fellow at the PaleoSed+ lab at the University of Manitoba's department of earth sciences, spreads a geological map over the hood of her rental car to confirm which era of history they can expect to find fossils from in this area, now part of the Canadian Prairies. "All the orange is Devonian," she tells Kirstin Brink, another paleontologist at the University of Manitoba. The Devonian period is nicknamed the Age of Fishes, Jobbins explains to a CBC reporter. This area is where, in the 1990s, researchers from the University of Manitoba discovered some ancient fossils. They weren't quite sure what they had found, but Jobbins studied them, found a few more fossils and realized it was a brand new discovery — one of the first fish to develop body armour, a jaw and teeth. Jobbins renamed and reclassified the fish as Elmosteus lundarensis, named after the Elm Point Formation, the rock formation it was found in. Her research was published in July's edition of the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. The remnants of this fish are about 150 million years older than the dinosaurs and only about 1½ metres long, the size of a large Chinook salmon. "We're hoping that we can look for more of these fish and more of the placoderms, more of Elmo and its relatives, as well," she said. Jobbins pointed out the teeth, an eye socket and other features of the fossils in the collection of the university's Geological Sciences Museum. The fish have armour made of dermal bone on the head and thorax, but the rest of the skeleton is made of cartilage, similar to sharks. "This makes them a very important group to understand the origin of bone and the early evolution of bone, as well," Jobbins said. "Also the jaws itself, because this is one of the first fish to develop jaws in the first place, and as well as teeth. They kind of come hand in hand. So understanding how this evolved, how it originated, how we got to having something like what we have today, which is on a whole other level of complexity." Jobbins and her team are visiting more quarries this summer, hoping to find more fossils and answer more questions — what the animal looked like, but also its environment and what the conditions were for the evolution of these features. "We can understand much more of what was present at the time and how diverse … which is incredible." Manitoba is well-known for its fossil record, much of it on display at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Man. The province's Tyndall stone has preserved fossils of the world's largest mosasaurs, marine reptiles from the Cretaceous period. As fellow paleontologist Brink scrambled over rocks, pointing out fossils of corals and sponges and relatives of the starfish, she explained that Manitoba is a great place for finding fossils because so many different ages of rock are preserved. "We can see how life has changed through all these different time periods." Many of the rocks have been dug up because mining "just kind of exposed all these fossils by accident, which is really great for us paleontologists," Brink said. On this day, they found a lot of fossils, including some they'll use to teach students in fall, but unfortunately, Elmosteus lundarensis was elusive. They'll try again another time. Still, Virgil Johnson, the reeve of the rural municipality of Coldwell who helped them access the quarries, was delighted. Johnson grew up around here and spent a lot of time in the quarries. "We used to find all these little fossils when we were crawling around out here and going swimming and stuff, so it was actually pretty neat that when you get the experts out here and kind of show you exactly how old things were and what they are," he said. "It's very exciting." 390-million-year-old fish fossils found in Manitoba quarry 3 minutes ago A University of Manitoba paleontologist has unearthed a new classification of ancient fish. Researchers believe the fish swam 390 million years ago in what was once a vast inland sea.
CTV News
08-07-2025
- Science
- CTV News
Researchers discover new ancient, armoured fish fossil in Manitoba
A new armoured fish that swam through what is now Manitoba around 390 million years ago has been discovered by researchers at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Melina Jobbins, a postdoctoral fellow at the university, helped lead a team near Lundar, Man., to discover this fish that has been given the name Elmosteus lundarensis. Jobbins said this specific fish is from the mid-Devonian era and prior to this discovery, there isn't much known about fish in Manitoba during this time. 'It's actually great that we can find a bit more and describe this further to show what we have in this province and show people that we have great stuff other than dinosaurs, for example,' said Jobbins. Dr. Melina Jobbins Dr. Melina Jobbins at the dig site in Lundar, Man. Uploaded July 8, 2025. (Dr. Melina Jobbins) Elmosteus lundarensis falls under the placoderm category of fish, which is essentially a fish that had dermal bone around the head area, which acted as armour. Jobbins said this discovery can help us learn even more about the evolution. 'They were also some of the first groups to actually evolve jaws. So they're some of our oldest ancestors. So we get to learn so much about them, about how we got teeth, how we got jaws.' This finding will also help researchers learn what lived in the waters that once covered this province. 'It helps us understand what lived at this time, how much diversity there was. So we can do a lot of ecological analyses.' Dr. Melina Jobbins Dr. Melina Jobbins holds a piece of the new ancient armoured fish fossil found in Manitoba. Uploaded July 8, 2025. (Alex Karpa/CTV News) Manitoba is a fossil hot spot in Canada, the mosasaur being one of the most famous creatures discovered. But this latest discovery helps show there were so many different species that called the province home millions of years ago. 'This group of fish is probably one of the lesser-known groups. So it's really interesting to actually find new fossils and to get to put them on display to show people just how diverse the fossil record of Manitoba actually is,' said Dr. Kirstin Brink, an associate professor of paleontology at the University of Manitoba. As for why Manitoba is so fossil-rich, Brink said Manitoba has the right kind of rock structures to properly preserve fossils. 'A lot of the fossils we find in the province are actually due to mining. So mines that are actually scraping away all the rock to collect it, they'll uncover fossils, kind of by accident. So we can go in there and collect them and preserve them in our museums.' Fish fossil The ancient fish fossil found in Lundar, Man. Uploaded July 8, 2025. (Dr. Melina Jobbins) Jobbins, who said this is a top three discovery for her so far in her career, believes this is just the start of finding more of these kinds of fish in the province. 'I'm sure there'll be more to find as we go there and do fieldwork in the future,' said Jobbins. The Elmosteus lundarensis fossil can be seen on display at the Geological Sciences Museum at the University of Manitoba. - With files from CTV's Alex Karpa
