All that glitters is not gold.

But in the world of fossil discovery, a golden glow is cause for celebration, even if it’s not real.

This is the case of Luke Parry, professor of paleobiology at the University of Oxford, who announced this week that he had unearthed in New York State a perfectly and beautifully preserved fossil in pyrite – otherwise known as Fool’s Gold – giving it a sparkling golden color. .

In a report Published Tuesday in the journal Current Biology, Parry and a team of researchers announced that the fossil is a previously unknown species of arthropod – a category that includes spiders and insects – dating back 450 million years. Ordovician period (485 million to 443 million years ago).

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“There are more living arthropod species than any other group of animals, and this fossil tells us what these animals looked like almost half a billion years ago in astonishing detail,” said Parry on USA TODAY on Wednesday.

The fossil was first scanned by Parry in 2019 and shows how arthropods continued to evolve at a time when scientists believed them to be extinct, the University of Oxford said in a press release. Until recently, scientists believed that arthropods flourished during the Cambrian period (538 million to 485 million years ago), before the period in which the specimen found by Parry’s team was fossilized. . according to Oxford.

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The pyrite that fossilized the specimen, named Lomankus edgecombei, “preserves crucial evidence of the evolution of life in the oceans 450 million years ago,” co-author Derek Briggs said in a press release. .

The density of the pyrite also means that fool’s gold has completely filled tiny areas where the arthropod’s body once lay in the sediment, including internal body parts, the scientists said.

“These fossils are spectacularly preserved. They look like they could just up and run away,” Parry said. “It’s incredible that these fossils exist.”

This article was originally published on USA TODAY: Encased in glistening gold, discovery reveals unknown species