Life in the Devonian.

In the Devonian period, some 410-360 million years ago, the eastern coastline of Australia lay much further west. An extensive river and lake system covered large parts of the continent, draining into shallow seas. What is now Canowindra would then have been a wide flood plain, dotted with lakes and billabongs. It was the 'Age of Fishes', and they abounded in the area. Scientists have been able to reconstruct the fishes found at Canowindra on the basis of the fossil evidence found there. The fauna appears to have been dominated by two kinds of strange armoured fishes, Bothriolepis and Remigolepis , which belong to a long-extinct group called the antiarchs. A third, less common, armoured fish known as Groenlandaspis was also present . Abundant fossil remains of Bothriolepis, Remigolepis and Groenlandaspis have been found in late Devonian rocks in most of the world's widely scattered continents. Such finds support the theory that the earth's continents were once grouped together in the form of a super- continent, Pangaea, which later split up.

The largest fishes found at Canowindra belong to the air-breathing, lobe-finned sarcopterygians, which included the ancestors of the first vertebrates to invade dry land, the amphibians. Five types of sarcopterygian fishes have been found at Canowindra, four of which have been named Canowindra grossi, Mandageria fairfaxi, Cabonnichthys burnsi, and Gooloogongia loomesi. Completing the faunal list at Canowindra is a small, long-snouted lungfish (or dipnoan), known only from two incomplete specimens. It appears to be closely related to Griphognathus from the Late Devonian rocks of the Kimberley region in Western Australia, and Soederberghia from the Late Devonian of East Greenland. This find provides yet another ancient link between today's widely scattered continents.