Paleontologists from the University of Alberta have discovered a 90-million-year-old species of fish, all thanks to the help of a 10-year-old boy who accidentally stumbled across a fossil.

The child was on a tour at the Monastery of La Candelaria in Colombia, when he noticed something strange on the ground: the shape of a fish in the flagstones.

The boy snapped a photo and showed it to staff at the Centro de Investigaciones Paleontologicas, a local museum that works with the University of Alberta to protect and study regional fossil discoveries. The centre quickly recognized the bizarre shape for what it was: a nearly perfect, intact fossil of an ancient fish.

The staff then shared their findings with the University of Alberta. 

"After looking at some images we recognized the importance of the discovery: an entirely brand new group of fish, never seen before in North and South America, and with a few representatives worldwide," Javier Luque, PhD candidate at the University of Alberta and co-author of a study on the fossil, told CTV Edmonton.

The finding marks the very first fossil “lizard fish” from the Cretaceous period to ever be found in tropical South America. 

"It is rare to find such a complete fossil of a fish from this moment in the Cretaceous period. Deepwater fish are difficult to recover, as well as those from environments with fast flowing waters," Oksana Vernygora, PhD student at the University of Alberta and a lead author of the study on the fossil, said in a statement. 

"But what surprises me the most is that, after two years of being on a walkway, it was still intact. It’s amazing."

The specimen was named Candelarhynchus padillai – a combination of “Candelaria,” the name of the monastery where the fossil was found, and the "rhynchos," the Greek word for "nose." "Rhynchos" refers to the species’ peculiar long, slender face.

"Often we think, we have fish now, we had fish then, we’ll likely have fish in the future. But the importance of fish is just that,” Vernygora said. 

"We can see how fish have changed as their environments have changed throughout history. Studying fish diversity gives us amazing predicting power for the future--especially as we start to see the effects of climate change."

Findings on the new fish species were published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.