The Friends of Charles Darwin

Fossils of a tiny creature which lived before the existence of dinosaurs have been found in Aberdeenshire. The tiny relics which are less than two millimetres long are the remains of cladocerans, or water fleas, which lived 410 million years ago. Experts at the National Museum of Scotland said the discovery, in the world-renowned cherts sediments at Rhynie, was of global importance. They said it explained the mystery of what the first freshwater fish fed on.