Message #144232

[Bianca]

This 13-million-year-old baby seahorse, with a head measuring just 5 millimeters (0.2 inch) long, is among the oldest seahorse fossils ever discovered, scientists said in April 2009.

Earlier seahorses likely lived in the temperate shallow coastal waters of the passageway between Europe and Africa that linked the Atlantic with the Indian Ocean until about 15 million years ago, the researchers say. That passageway would have helped the fish slowly spread around the globe.

They probably dwelled in dense beds of seagrass, where food--such as small crustaceans--was abundant. The seahorses' black flecks would have camouflaged them in the vegetation, which the fish also likely anchored themselves to using their prehensile tails.


—Photograph courtesy
Jure Žalohar