Extract from ABC News
Arenaepeton supinatus almost ended up forgotten inside a retaining wall.
In what is now legend among Australian palaeontologists, it was only by chance that an almost perfectly preserved fossil of the prehistoric 1.5 metre amphibian was discovered on the Central Coast north of Sydney almost 30 years ago.
Retired chicken farmer Mihail Mihailidis had luckily taken a closer look at a slab of sandstone he'd bought for a backyard renovation.
Turning it over at his home on the coast, he saw the imprint of the curious creature.
"It's an incredibly rare find," palaeontologist Lachlan Hart says.
Mr Hart first saw the 240-million-year-old fossil as a dinosaur-obsessed 12-year-old. Following significant global press, it was on display in Sydney, after Mihail donated it to science.
Yet, it ended up back in storage without anybody actually formally identifying the species.
Mr Hart and his colleagues at the Australian Museum took the fossil out of the archives last year and started looking into it again.
"My mind blew," Mr Hart says.
"Just that personal connection I had with it, and the fact that nobody had the chance to work on it in the 25 years that had gone past.
"It's a really rare find in palaeontology to find a fossil that's got both the head and the body skeleton attached.
"And with this one, we've got remnants of soft tissue, so its fat and its skin as well."
These details helped the team identify the ancient creature as an order of ancient carnivorous amphibian, and formally give it a name.
"Arenaepeton means sand creeper translated from Latin," Mr Hart says.
"And supinatus means lying on its back because the fossil is belly up."
The Triassic era creature is believed to have hunted aquatic prey with tusk-like fangs, and may have had webbed feet.
It also survived two mass extinction events, potentially due to not being a picky eater.
"This fossil proves they were retaining fairly large sizes immediately after that mass extinction event," Mr Hart says.
"[That] tells us Australia was probably a really great place to live around that time."
Another palaeontologist describes the mapping of the species as "another datapoint in this great history of life on earth".
"Fossils, just like anything in the environment like trees and koalas, that's our heritage," Tim Ziegler from the Museums Victoria Research Institute said.
"We should be talking more about Australian dinosaurs and all the fossils like arenaepeton supinatus."
The fossil is set to go back on display at the Australian Museum in Sydney.
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