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Inverness might have felt a little warm over the last few days, but during the Devonian Period the Highlands lay in the middle of a sandy desert as hot as North Africa is today!

400 million years ago Britain lay on the edge of a large desert continent close to the equator. Fast flowing streams running down from the Highland mountains, then taller than the Himalayas, fed huge river systems and enormous lochs, some of which stretched from Inverness to the Orkneys.

Such an environment was ideal for fishes, which is why the Devonian Period is also known as ‘THE AGE OF FISHES’.

The latest exhibition at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery tells the story of this fascinating and important period of Earth’s history.

Highland fossil fishes are renowned for their detail and superb preservation. Inverness Museum has a large number of fossil fishes collected in the 19^th century, including several specimens donated by Hugh Miller, the famous Cromarty geologist and writer. Most have not been on public display since the early 1900s. Also on show is a newly restored portrait of Hugh Miller.

The seas and lochs of the period saw the rapid evolution of a wide range of bizarre forms. Some, such as the Acanthodians bristling with sharp spines, and the Placoderms encased in bony armour like medieval knights, are now extinct, whilst others include the ancestors of all today’s fishes.

By the late Devonian some of these Highland fishes had evolved lungs and limbs and the world’s first amphibian probably crawled ashore somewhere near Elgin.

Windblown desert sand and silt filled the lochs and riverbeds, preserving some of these fishes as fossils, eventually building up to form the Old Red Sandstone.

Inverness Castle is built from this red desert sandstone and the High Street paved with hardwearing Caithness flagstone laid down in a Highland loch 400 million year ago.

Many of the ancient fishes were first collected and described in the early 19^th century by local geologists like Robert Dick of Thurso and Hugh Miller. Thanks largely to Miller’s writings the classic fossil fish sites of Caithness, Cromarty and Nairnside are known throughout the world and a Mecca for visiting geologists and amateur fossil hunters alike.

The ‘Age of Fishes’ runs until the 8^th August in the First Floor Gallery of the Museum.  The opening hours are Monday to Saturday 9am-5pm.  Admission is free.