An amateur paleontologist named Stephanie Leco, 26, has discovered a jawbone from a long-snouted fish, known to exist more than 220 million years ago, at Petrified Forest, livemint reports.
Stephanie was part of the first dig for citizens held last month at the national park near Holbrook.
The national park near Holbrook is famous for turning up fossils from the dinosaur age.
The fossil is about the size of a pinky fingernail and was discovered from the site of what was once a water body during the Late Triassic period when the fish were thought to be extinct in North America.
Ben Kligman, a senior at the University of California, Berkley, who had been studying the pond site preserved in a layer of rock said,
"Although it's probably a new species, we can't say that it is yet because we don't have enough specimens."
Kligman said that he planned to return to Petrified Forest to look for a full fossil of the fish to ascertain if it's a new species.
Park paleontologist Bill Parker said that the fossils of fish from the Early Triassic period were found only in China in the Late Triassic. He said that other fossils of the fish might also be found on the East Coast and on the Colorado Plateau where similar rock is exposed.
"People who actually study this group of fish might start setting their sights in our direction now," he said.
The Triassic period started about 250 million years ago and lasted 50 million years. It followed the largest extinction of life on Earth.
