Researchers discover new ancient, armoured fish fossil in Manitoba

A prehistoric fish dating back 390 million years was recently discovered in Manitoba’s Interlake region.

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.

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.”

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.”

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