Sydney’s 90m-year-old climbing galaxias fish may have been wiped out by school building works

The species can climb waterfalls and reaches back to Gondwanaland – but there are fears polluted runoff has proven fatal

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

A “miracle fish” may have been snuffed out in its Sydney habitat by bungled construction work at a nearby government high school, local environmentalists fear.

The climbing galaxias (Galaxias brevipinnis) belongs to a species line reaching back to Gondwanaland. It was only identified in the Manly Dam region in Sydney’s north – the fish’s most northerly known location in Australia – in 1998.