Palaeontologists reveal 350m-year-old tropical Scotland bursting with life

Research in the Scottish Borders has produced some amazing finds - and suggests that our view of the fossil record needs a rethink

I held in my hands one of the first animals to drag itself out of the water and onto land. Christened "Tiny", she (I like to think it was female, but we can't actually tell) is entombed in a chunk of boring, black rock. I ran my hands over the surface, feeling the bumps betraying a stone pregnant with fossils. Yet, from the outside there's no sign of the treasure within: no one has ever actually seen it.

"We didn't really know it was in the small piece of rock that we collected until it was CT scanned," Dr Nick Fraser, Keeper of Natural Sciences at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh told me. "We were quite surprised to find Tiny hiding in the sediment - we still only know it from the 3D scan and the 3D print and so haven't had the pleasure of seeing the actual fossil!"