Ancient Armored Fish Smaller than Bus Reveals New Study

(Photo : WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images)
A new study reveals that a once-considered giant ancient armored fish is smaller than previously recorded.

A new study reveals that a once-considered giant ancient armored fish is smaller than a bus as previously recorded. This monster from ancient seas about 360 million years ago is still as fearsome as thought.

Ancient Armored Fish Size Revised

A bony fish called Dunkleosteus terrelli or Dunk was alive during the Devonian period from 419 million to 358 million years ago that was a major predator, reported Live Science. Swimming oceans that once covered Ohio to look for helpless prey against 8,000 pounds of bite force, noted Yahoo.

The first fossils of the Dunk were found 150 years ago on Lake Erie, close to Cleveland. One of the most giant fossils of the Dunk is at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Unlike modern fishes, its body comprises bony armor and a skull with a cartilage skeleton. The skull measures 3 feet tall and is like an alien creature. Since the bony skull survived as fossils by the cartilage skeleton, that did not give the exact length. Researchers used a shark's skull size and length to estimate its size, but a recent study revealed something else.

Ancient Fish Not a Gargantuan Aquatic Behemoth

Things changed when Russell Engelman, a doctoral student at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, went to the museum to research the topic because it was hard to do lab work during the pandemic, per Research Gate.

Looking at Dunk's fossil, something did not add up. The size and how organisms are affected by body size and the Dunk's size was puzzling.

Suppose the giant fish had a 30-foot body which needed to be corrected based on reasoning. Attempts to make an image of the armored predator had been unrealistic and different from the original drawings. It became apparent that the estimates of its initial size need to be more accurate, as was concluded.

Not satisfied that it forced Engelman to go back over sources that said the size needed to be examined. It was glossed over, and more time was required to analyze it comprehensively.

Going through the many fish skull and relative sizes then matched up to how large the body is. The skull size and proportion of the body did match up. Applying what he learned about relative size and using the Dunk, it should be 30 feet long but is 13 feet instead, he wrote on February 21 in the Diversity Journal.

This analysis looked at many speculative aspects of fishy factors, and the height and with of a skull are major clues. In short, that says fish with long skulls will be much longer than those with shorter skulls. Such a conclusion has an impact on fish size.

Based on this, the Dunk is built like a tuna instead of a shark-like body which is not as impressive as Cleveland's paleontological mascot. However, the study concludes that its size has been exaggerated for some time. It cannot be denied that it is still lethal, but it shows that paleoichthyologists occasionally embellish. An ancient-armored fish gets a downgrade but is still chunky, though smaller than a bus.