Rise of modern marine fishes captured in an early Paleocene Lagerstätte
Sanaa El-Sayed, Matt Friedman, Belal S. Salem, Abdullah S. Gohar, Shorouq F. Al-Ashqar, Mohamed Amin, Hossam El-Saka, Hadeel Saad, Robert P. Speijer, Hesham M. Sallam · 2026
Read Rise of modern marine fishes captured in an early Paleocene Lagerstätte by Sanaa El-Sayed, Matt Friedman, Belal S. Salem, Abdullah S. Gohar, Shorouq F. Al-Ashqar, Mohamed Amin, Hossam El-Saka, Hadeel Saad, Robert P. Speijer, Hesham M. Sallam (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13232593.txt.
Description
Sanaa El-Sayed and colleagues describe in 2026 an Egyptian fossil bed that catches sea fish soon after the dinosaur-killing impact. The site, dated near sixty-two million years ago, preserves an offshore community from the early Paleocene. At least twenty-one ray-finned fish kinds across nine orders appear in the beds.
That single site holds more kinds than all other skeletal sites of its age combined. Most fish belong to percomorphs, the vast group that dominates modern seas, including the oldest skeletal records for six living groups. Modern-style communities thus formed within a few million years of the extinction. Tropical sites led the shift, with percomorphs spreading toward cooler waters later.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sanaa El-Sayed, Matt Friedman, Belal S. Salem, Abdullah S. Gohar, Shorouq F. Al-Ashqar, Mohamed Amin, Hossam El-Saka, Hadeel Saad, Robert P. Speijer, Hesham M. Sallam |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 42 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |