- Who: Research team led by Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Diego Volosky).
- Where: Atacama-Wüste, Chile.
- What: Discovery of an extremely species-rich fossil site from the Triassic.
- Age: Approx. 201 to 252 million years.
- Special feature: Excellent preservation of insects, fish, and plants.
Jena/Chile (10.02.2026) – It sounds almost like an adventure novel, but it is hard scientific work with a sensational result: A research team under the leadership of Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena has made a remarkable find in northern Chile, specifically in the arid Atacama-Wüste. The scientists came across a fossil site that is unparalleled worldwide in its diversity and quality of preservation.
A Window into the Era of the Supercontinent
Led by Diego Volosky from the Institut für Geowissenschaften at the university in Jena, experts from Chile, Argentina, and Germany collaborated. What they found took even the most experienced paleontologists’ breath away: remains of an entire ecosystem from the Triassic period were hidden within the rock layers. This geological epoch dates back approximately 201 to 252 million years.
At that time, the world map looked very different. The giant southern continent of Gondwana united what is now South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. Where one of the driest deserts on Earth is located today, there was once a flourishing freshwater lake. “Such complete and diverse fossil communities are rare, especially considering the age of the fossils,” says Diego Volosky, explaining the significance of the find. The results have now been published in the journal Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology.
From Sharks to Insects: Perfectly Preserved
The special nature of the discovery is not just the quantity, but above all the quality of the fossils. The spectrum of finds ranges from plants and insects to freshwater crustaceans and mollusks, through to fish and even sharks. The fact that these creatures have remained so detailed is nothing short of a miracle.
The researchers assume that special conditions prevailed at the bottom of the lake at that time. Fine-grained sediments and an extremely oxygen-poor environment ensured that the dead organisms were not consumed by scavengers or decomposed. “As a result, insects remained completely preserved, as did fish skeletons with skin impressions and the reproductive organs of land plants,” explains Volosky. This “snapshot” now allows the Jena researchers to reconstruct a detailed food web of a 200-million-year-old ecosystem.
High-Tech Research from Jena
The find once again underlines Jena’s importance as an international science location. In addition to the university, the Max-Planck-Institut für Geoanthropologie is also involved. Micropaleontologist Olga Schmitz describes her participation as an “incredible opportunity.” Her specialty is ostracods – tiny seed shrimps that are often smaller than a millimeter. Thanks to her expertise, these microscopic witnesses of time could be extracted from the rock samples.
For Peter Frenzel, head of the paleontology working group at the university in Jena, the collaboration with Volosky is a “stroke of luck.” He emphasizes that the current publication is only the beginning of a larger project. The scientists now want to understand how life recovered after the massive species extinction at the end of the Paleozoic era.
Why it Matters Today
One might ask: what do 200-million-year-old fish have to do with our present? The answer is highly topical. The Triassic followed the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history. By analyzing how ecosystems reformed and recovered under extreme global environmental changes back then, Jena researchers can draw conclusions about today’s climate change scenarios. The Atacama-Wüste in Chile thus provides data that could help to better understand long-term patterns of ecological recovery.
The evaluation of the finds will keep the teams in Jena and South America busy for years – and will certainly reveal one or two more secrets of prehistoric times.