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 question I am often asked is "what age does does a Corydoras live to" this set me thinking of the origins of our little whiskered friends and the discovery that they lived on our earth (well in the water anyway!) at least 50-60 million years ago.  The
last of the dinosaurs disappeared from the earth around
65 million years ago so our fossil friend Corydoras
revelatus lived in the Tertiary period just after
this, alongside the hairy mammal. It was discovered
in Argentina in Sunchal, Juyuy province, by a well
known entomologist, Professor T.D.A.Cockerell of the
University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1925. He was actually
searching along with his wife for fossil insects at
the time before he came across our plated friend.The green Tertiary rock measured 32mm and the imprint 27mm and it bears the outline of a Corydoras (Sands,D. 1983) What was noticed was that a flaw in the rock suggested that the dorsal spine was longer (Isbrücker) and the problem of the one dimensional shape of the fossil made it the subject of a new species, Corydoras revelatus Cockerell, 1925. It is now housed in the British Natural History Museum, London.
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The
entomologist T.D.A."Theo" Cockerell (1866-1948)
was better known for his work on the wild bees of
Colorado and wrote many papers on these insects.
He has even a mosquito from Florida named after
him. 
How
is a fossil formed?. Well this Corydoras
died and was covered by the mud at the bottom of
the river. The river would have dried up and the
sediment compressed and hardened. 
