The scientific team, which included researchers from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Warsaw (UW) and the Institute of Palaeobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, has made a discovery of bones belonging to extinct animal species from around 240 million years ago. The specimens were found in the Upper Silesian village of Miedary.

Before the appearance of the dinosaurs, the areas studied included a bay of tropical sea, at the bottom of which the bones of at least twenty-four species of fish, amphibians and reptiles were preserved. The researchers discovered more than 1,000 bones of extinct animals.

Some of these were previously unknown from Poland, and some have not yet been found anywhere in the world. “Among other things, we discovered the remains of a crocodile-like Mastodonsaurus, a fish-eating as yet unnamed armoured reptile and an aquatic predator called Jaxtasuchus”, said Dr Mateusz Tałanda from the UW.