Hold onto your lab coats, paleontology fans! A jaw-dropping 134-million-year-old fossil of an extinct lamprey has been discovered in Chengde, Hebei Province, northern China. This slithery specimen is rewriting the map of prehistoric life in Asia 🌏✨.
Identified as Mesomyzon mengae Chang by researcher Zhang Jiangyong from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, this ‘soft-bodied superstar’ shows these ancient jawless fish roamed wider than we thought – stretching from Inner Mongolia to coastal Liaoning and now Hebei! 🗺️🐟
Why the hype? These fossils are rarer than a TikTok trend lasting a year. Unlike dino bones, lampreys left almost no traces due to their squishy, scale-free bodies. In fact, Mesomyzon mengae Chang was once the only known jawless fossil from the entire Age of Dinosaurs! 🦖🔬
This discovery in Fengning County is like finding a missing puzzle piece for scientists studying ancient ecosystems. Who knew northern Hebei was part of the lamprey party circuit 134 million years ago? 🎉🌿
