RARE marine fossils dating back around 465 million years have been found in a central Spain national park.
According to the ministry of environment and energy transition – led by one of the four deputy presidents, Teresa Ribera – the fossils are of a cephalopod, a family which includes the squid, and have turned up hundreds of kilometres from the nearest sea.
They were located by scientists working in the Cabañeros National Park, which sits across the borders of the provinces of Toledo and Ciudad Real, in Castilla-La Mancha.
The site has been key in naming the fossils – the mysterious prehistoric sea creature has been baptised as the Cabaneroceras Aznari.
As for the Aznari part, there is no link to Spain's former PP president José María Aznar, who ruled until 2004 – it comes from the owner of the land in the village of Horcajo de los Montes (Ciudad Real province) where the fossils were found, Alejandro Aznar.
It is believed to have lived in the now-disappeared sea platforms in what was originally one of the planet's two continents, Gondwanaland – the other being Laurasia – and belong to a rare group of intejocerids, a type of cephalopod originally thought to have only lived in paleotropical zones.
They were believed to be exclusive to what is now Siberia, the Asian part of Russia, and North America, especially in polar regions, as they would have thrived in very cold waters.
The discovery came as part of a wider research project into national parks, led by Dr Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Marco of Spain's National Research Council (CSIC), and specialist in fossilised cephalopods from Finland's Natural History Museum, Björn Kröge.
Once fully examined, the fossils (pictured above) will be put on display in the Geo-Mining Museum in Ciudad Real, the Castilla-La Mancha Palaeontology Museum in Cuenca, the Natural Science Museum in Viso del Marqués, and the Cabañeros National Park Visitors' Centre.
