Lecturer at the Inonu University, the Department of Mining Engineering, Doc. Dr. Mehmet Onal and Chairman of the Department of Turkish at the Education Faculty Prof. Hasan Kavruk said that the mapping process of the 78-million-year-old fossil of a sea creature, which was first mapped in 1986, along with all other samples, have been mapped as of the year 2006. The team behind the Malatya leg of the project, Doc. Dr. Onal and Prof. Kavruk, discovered a "Rudist" fossil as a result of a 10-day field research in the rural districts of Akcadag and Hekimhan in 1981.

Prof. Hasan Kavruk said that it was now proved that the Turkish Central-Anatolian city of Malatya had been a sea and that Malatya possessed the characteristics of an open-air museum for this world-famous sea creature. Kavruk also emphasized that the University of Istanbul, at the earlier years of the Republic, had paid millions of pounds to buy another sample of the 78-million-year-old "Rudist" fossil, whereas it could have been easily found in Malatya.

Doc. Dr. Mehmet Onal noted that an international symposium on the fossil would be held in July 2007 and added that the fossil became extinct 70 million years ago. Onal also pointed out that the historic discovery of the 'Rudist' fossil - Miseia Regularis - in Malatya had already been covered by the Journal of Asian Earth Science.

The Rudist fossil lived for a short time and then became extinct and it is now widely used as a research topic due to its rarity, Doc. Dr. Onal said and further stressed that the largest Rudist fossil bed was in Malatya.

Onal also maintained that Malatya had been a sea bed for millions of years and it was possible to come across sea creatures as old as 400 million years old.

"It is estimated that it has been 18 million years since the sea in Malatya has withdrawn. Given the fact that it had remained a sea for millions of years, it is possible to discover very old fossils in the outskirts of the city."