(CN) — A 280-million-year-old fossil which puzzled scientists for nearly a century is now believed to be, at least in part, a forgery.
“The answer to all our questions was right in front of us,” said Valentina Rossi, who led a team which studied the ancient fossil.
Rossi is also lead author of paper, published Thursday in the journal Paleontology, that officially declared the fossil to be a fake.
“We had to study this fossil specimen in details to reveal its secrets," Rossi said — "even those that perhaps we did not want to know."
Discovered in the Italian alps in 1931, the fossil of the small, lizard-like creature — Tridentinosaurus antiquus — was considered a significant specimen, the oldest body fossil ever discovered in the Southern Alps.
At first glance, researchers thought the specimen was exceptionally well-preserved. Its dark outline was believed to the remnants of soft tissue, making the creature a reptile even older than the dinosaurs.
Just 26-and-a-half-centimeters long, archeologists struggled to explain how crisp and well defined the fossil was. The Natural History Museum in Padua, Italy, where the find was kept before being shipped to England for analysis, attributed its exceptional condition "to a particular fossilisation process, carbonisation, which is relatively common among plant specimens but rare among vertebrates."
One researcher called the specimen “a beautiful but biochronologically useless specimen of which only the out−line of the soft tissues is well preserved.” In other words: It looked good but offered no insight into the way reptiles evolved.
A new microscopic analysis headed by Rossi and using ultraviolet light photography, on the other hand, has revealed that the fossil’s outline is mostly just black paint. The specimen appears to be coated with some sort of material, such as a varnish or lacquer.
“Coating fossils with varnishes and/or lacquers was the norm in the past and sometimes is still necessary to preserve a fossil specimen in museum cabinets and exhibits,” according to a press release announcing the discovery. “The findings indicate that the body outline of Tridentinosaurus antiquus was artificially created, likely to enhance the appearance of the fossil. This deception misled previous researchers, and now caution is being urged when using this specimen in future studies.”
The fossil probably isn’t entirely a fake. Much of it, underneath the paint, appears genuine — though not particularly well-preserved.
“The peculiar preservation of Tridentinosaurus had puzzled experts for decades,” said Rossi’s co-author, Professor Evelyn Kustatscher, in a written statement. “Now, it all makes sense." What had long been described as carbonized skin was in fact "just paint.”
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