When an asteroid struck Earth about 66 million years ago, it ended the age of dinosaurs and transformed life across the planet. The effects of that catastrophe are visible in the fossil record on land, but scientists know far less about what happened to fishes in the seas during the first few million years after the extinction.Like many people during the pandemic, I suddenly found myself living through long stretches of isolation and uncertainty. In 2020, while alone in my apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I was finishing a study on fossil fishes from Egypt. This question of what happened to fishes immediately after the age of the dinosaurs kept troubling me.That missing chapter represented a major gap in scientific understanding of how modern marine ecosystems emerged.A unique opportunityAt the time, I was studying younger fossil fishes, but I kept wondering whether older rocks in Egypt might preserve clues to this critical period. During those long pandemic months, I spent countless hours reading geological reports and searching for mentions of formations with fish fossils of the right age.AdvertisementAdvertisementThen, Hesham Sallam, my adviser, introduced me to earlier work by paleontologist and geologist Robert Speijer and colleagues who had documented rocks at Qreiya in Egypt that were deposited only about 4 million years after the asteroid impact.That single detail changed the entirety of my Ph.D. research.As this research started to point my work in a new direction, the pandemic was simultaneously disrupting my own life. I had been accepted into the Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan and was living in the United States, preparing to begin my studies. But COVID-19 restrictions suddenly forced me to return to Egypt, my home country. What felt like a major setback at the time ultimately became one of the most important turning points in my career.While waiting for the embassies to reopen and student visas to be issued, I continued discussing the fossil-bearing rocks with my adviser. Those conversations soon became a plan: We would travel to Egypt’s eastern desert and see the site for ourselves.Discoveries in the desertIn July 2021, our team of five researchers set out for Qreiya 3, a remote fossil locality in upper Egypt. Reaching the site required two days of travel from Mansoura. The terrain was so rough that our vehicles could take us only part of the way, forcing us to hike over sharp rocks carrying equipment, food, water and eventually fossil specimens.AdvertisementAdvertisementFinding the fossil layer itself was not easy. With limited information about its exact location, we spent hours searching before finally reaching the end of a remote desert valley.Then came a moment I will never forget. Belal Salem, a member of our team, struck the rock with his hammer. Almost immediately, a fossil moonfish appeared.Moonfishes already held special significance for me because they were among the fishes I had previously studied from younger Egyptian rocks. Seeing one emerge from rocks that were millions of years older felt almost surreal, as though the site itself was answering the question that I had first asked during those quiet pandemic days.It was the first sign that Qreiya 3 might be extraordinary.AdvertisementAdvertisementLater that same field season, I received another unexpected email: My request for an expedited student visa appointment had been approved. We had only a few days to wrap up the expedition and return home so I could prepare for my departure to the U.S.Returning to Qreiya 3 …
