Evolution’s Missing Chapter features objects from a find hailed
by Sir David Attenborough as ‘wonderful and exciting’.
The fossil finds from the Scottish Borders help overturn a
long-held theory about evolution on Earth. ‘Romer’s Gap’, named
after the American palaeontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer, is a gap
in the fossil record, showing little evidence of life on land
between around 360 and 345 million years ago.
The gap led some palaeontologists to conclude that there were
low levels of oxygen during that time, which limited evolution on
land. However, the newly unveiled fossils suggest that a wide
diversity of amphibians, plants, fish and invertebrates all existed
during this 15 million year period - they shed light on a period
that previously had been almost blank.
The fossils, unearthed by palaeontologist Stan Wood following a
20-year search in the Scottish Borders, are what experts believe to
be part of a whole eco-system preserved in the fossil record,
including plants, fish and amphibians. One notable amphibian
specimen has been nicknamed ‘Ribbo’ due to his prominent and
well-preserved ribs, providing scientists with enough information
to interpret what the creature may have looked like as it roamed
the Tweed basin around 350 million years ago.
The cache of fossils includes new vertebrate forms previously
unknown to science, and researchers around the world are excited at
the new information they will provide about the earliest
development of life on land as we know it today.