Fossil hunters have named a 300m-year-old amphibian in honor of the courier service FedEx, after unearthing the creature on land owned by the company near a US airport.
The remains of the ancient amphibian, which lived 70m years before the first dinosaurs, were recovered in 2004 from a slab of rock near Pittsburgh International Airport by Adam Striegel, an amateur fossil enthusiast on a geology field trip.
Researchers at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh described the creature on the basis of its remarkably well-preserved 12cm-long skull, which survived fossilization without being crushed.
A group led by David Berman, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the museum, identified the amphibian as a new genus and species, Fedexia striegeli, in the institution’s journal, Annals of Carnegie Museum.
- Indian Journalist.
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