Large-Mouthed Fish Was Top Predator After Mass Extinction

Possible look of the newly discovered predatory fish species Birgeria americana with the fossil oft he skull shown at bottom right (Artwork: Nadine Bösch). The most catastrophic mass extinction on Earth took place about 252 million years ago - at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geological periods. Up to 90 percent of the marine species of that time were annihilated. Worldwide biodiversity then recovered in several phases throughout a period of about five million years. Until now, paleontologists have assumed that the first predators at the top of the food chain did not appear until the Middle Triassic epoch about 247 to 235 million years ago. Unexpected find of a large predatory fish . Swiss and U.S. American researchers led by the Paleontological Institute and Museum of the University of Zurich have discovered the fossil remains of one of the earliest large-sized predatory fishes of the Triassic period: an approximately 1.8-meter-long primitive bony fish with long jaws and sharp teeth.