Archaeologists in Ankara, Turkey, have uncovered an ancient fossil from the Tethys Sea at Külhöyük, a 5,000-year-old Hattian and Hittite settlement in the capital’s Gölbaşı district. Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Ministry said the gastropod fossil is about 66 million years old and may have been carried to the settlement by people who lived there thousands of years later.
The fossil was found during excavations in Oyaca, where researchers are studying Külhöyük’s long human history. Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced the discovery, saying the animal lived along the Tethys shoreline about 66 million years ago.
“The fossil is believed to date from the final phases of the Tethys Sea,” Ersoy said. Researchers are also considering whether Külhöyük residents found it elsewhere and brought it into the settlement.
Ancient fossil from the Tethys Sea raises a Bronze Age question
That possibility gives the find an archaeological dimension. Külhöyük is associated with the Hattian and Hittite civilizations and has a human history reaching back about 5,000 years. Ankara University describes it as an important Hittite settlement on a route leading south toward the Cilician Gates.
Ankara’daki Külhöyük’ten dikkat çekici bir keşif daha!
Geçtiğimiz günlerde 4 bin yıllık Hitit kabında Sevgi Çiçeği’nin bilinen en eski tohum kalıntılarına ulaştığımız Külhöyük, bu kez Ankara’nın milyonlarca yıl öncesine uzanan doğal tarihine ışık tutuyor.
Gölbaşı Oyaca’daki… pic.twitter.com/9WaUNL1943
— Mehmet Nuri Ersoy (@MehmetNuriErsoy) September 14, 2026
The fossil’s age places it vastly earlier than the settlement. The ministry has not announced a genus or species for the specimen beyond Gastropoda, the class of mollusks that includes snails and slugs. It also has not said how the age was established or identified the fossil’s original geological source. The ministry said the ancient sea once covered parts of Central Anatolia.
The Tethys Sea takes its name from Tethys, one of the Titans of ancient Greek mythology. Austrian geologist Eduard Suess introduced the geological name in 1893. In Hesiod’s “Theogony,” Tethys appears among the children of Uranus and Gaia and is associated with Oceanus and the ancient mythological world of rivers and waters.
Külhöyük discovery follows 4,000-year-old seed find
The fossil announcement came days after another discovery from the same excavation. Researchers found seed remains identified as Ankara’s “Sevgi Çiçeği,” or Love Flower, inside a roughly 4,000-year-old Hittite vessel. Officials described them as the oldest known seed remains of the plant.
Excavations at Külhöyük have been carried out since 2021 under a long-term program supported by the Turkish presidency. The work is led by Derya Yılmaz Tekin, an associate professor at Ankara University, on behalf of the university and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
The fossil adds a much deeper layer of natural history to a site already known for its Bronze Age past. Researchers are now examining how an object formed millions of years before the settlement came to be found within an archaeological context at Külhöyük.
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