China discovered an embolomere fossil in Yangquan city in North China's Shanxi province, the first such discovery in the North China Block and even East Asia Block.

The discovery was published on Dec 1 by a research team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Fossil Record, an international authoritative journal founded by the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany. 

Embolomeri were large crocodile-like and semiaquatic predators with sharp teeth, mainly adapted to the tropical jungle climate and living in the Carboniferous and early Permian periods. 

Their fossils were more distributed in the strata of Europe and North America from the Late Carboniferous to the Early Permian eras and they were once believed to have been extinct in the early Permian. 

The fossil discovered by Yangquan planning and natural resources bureau in Yangquan city, named Seroherpeton yangquanensis, was found to be from the Late Permian – around 254 million years ago. 

That makes it nearly 30 million years later than the known records and has refreshed scientists' understanding of the distribution of embolomeri. 

Seroherpeton yangquanensis lived in the same period as Taoheodon baizhijuni, a Dicynodontia discovered in the city in 2017. The discovery of these fossils has further proved the biodiversity in the Permian period in China.

In recent years, Yangquan planning and natural resources bureau has discovered a large number of precious paleontological fossils during its work in protecting paleontological fossil resources and cooperated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to carry out related research. 

The bureau will next move to ensure the protection of the geological relics and further develop and utilize the paleontological fossil resources in Yangquan.