National Geographic
An unexpected haul of nearly 500 fossilized fish in Egypt provides an unprecedented picture of how sea life rebounded from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Paleontologists excavating a 62.2-million-year-old rock layer in

Egypt have uncovered a petrified aquarium.The unexpected cache of fossilized fish—containing about 500 specimens from more than 20 types of ray-finned fish—offers a tantalizing look at how sea life bounced back from the asteroid impact that brought the Cretaceous to a crashing, fiery finale.

“When we arrived at the site and began finding well-preserved fish specimens in the sediment, we knew we were dealing with something exceptional,” says National Geographic Explorer Sanaa El-Sayed, a paleontologist at Mansoura University in Egypt. She and her colleagues published their findings on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.