Australian Museum Collections - Palaeontology

What is it?

The Australian Museum's 'mystery fossil' F.124805, as yet unidentified. Photo: S Humphreys

Occasionally a fossil is brought to the Museum that defies all our attempts to identify it. This is one such specimen that still remains a mystery to us.

We know it was found near Griffith, New South Wales, about ten years ago in rocks that have been determined to be late Devonian in age (360 million years old). Plant fossils found in these rocks indicate that the sediments which form these rocks were deposited in freshwater rivers and streams.

The only animal fossils known from the Devonian rocks in this area are fish, but the specimen definitely does not look like a fish or part of one. The only other fossils found in these rocks are plants, but we don't know of any plant that looks like this specimen. One other possibility is that it may bewhat is known as a 'trace fossil'. A trace fossil is a trace, mark or track left by an animal as it moved or fed on or in the sediment. However, it is not like any trace fossils we have seen before.

Griffith, New South Wales

The mystery fossil was displayed at a palaeontologicalconference at Macquarie University in 2002 in the hope that someone might identify it. There were some interesting and amusing suggestions, but none of the identifications were convincing so this fossil still has us scratching our heads.

Robert Jones