In Ankara, Turkey, a sea fossil dating back 66 million years has been excavated. According to Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, the Culture and Tourism Minister of Turkey, a fossilized Gastropoda found during excavations in Külěyük in the Gölbaşı district of Ankara dates back 66 million years, to a time when the organism inhabited the coasts of the Tethys Sea.
Ersoy claimed that the discovery provided a window into Ankara‘s millions-year-old natural history in a statement posted on social media.
The fossil was discovered at the 5,000-year-old Hatti and Hittite village of Külěyük. According to Ersoy, scientists think it originates from the last phases of the Tethys Sea, which covered portions of Central Anatolia when it first formed around 250 million years ago.
“What makes the discovery even more remarkable is the possibility that the fossil was brought to the settlement by Külhöyük’s inhabitants thousands of years ago,” Ersoy said.
Days before, in a 4,000-year-old Hittite vase at Külěyük, archeologists discovered what are thought to be the earliest known Love Flower seed fragments.
It is thought that the gastropod fossil discovered at the Külěyük excavation site belonged to a gastropod snail that inhabited the Tethys Sea’s beaches 66 million years ago.
The fossil, according to researchers, is from the last stages of the sea. About 250 million years ago, the Tethys Sea started to form, encompassing parts of Central Anatolia.
The finding of the fossil at the 5,000-year-old Hatti and Hittite settlement suggests that it was brought there thousands of years ago by the people who lived in Külęyük.
If verified, the theory might lead to additional investigations into how a naturally occurring formation that is millions of years old wound up in the settlement’s living area much later.
Under the direction of associate professor Derya Yılmaz Tekin, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Ankara University have been conducting archeological excavations at Külěyük since 2021.
Külěyük, where important discoveries regarding Ankara’s archeological past have been made, is now providing a window into a past that is millions of years older than humanity.
Source: Daily Sabah
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