Researchers have discovered 56 million-year-old fish fossils in an eastern Egyptian desert that show the fish were able to exist in seas with temperatures approaching 95 degrees Fahrenheit, The Daily Mail reported.
The fossils were found in dark-gray shale in a site in the Eastern Desert known as Ras Gharib A,
roughly 200 miles southeast of Cairo.
They include more than 12 groups of different type of bony fish from the era, including percomorph acanthomorphs, a group that includes walleye, bass and bluegills.
Other fish that were found include the moonfish from the Mene genus (more than 60 specimens were found), as well as deep-sea hatchetfish and a predatory species known as bonytongues, which still has living relatives.
The conditions that occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of highly elevated global temperatures, are seen as ‘the best ancient analog’ for the present-day warming of the planet.