> I can't wait to see what we will think about these fossils a decade later.

That is actually I think the proper attitude towards cutting edge research.

> That... is either very poorly worded or obviously not true.

But fish do breath. They filter water through their gills to do gas exchange. This process is called breathing. Why do you think it is obviously not true? (Or rather how would you word it better?)

Added to that there are fish that breath normal air like we do. Those are known as labyrinth fish. A common example is the Betta (or Siamese fighting) fish.

I didn't mean to imply that fish don't breathe.

The part as it rained down from the sky, to me, means that they were breathing the particles while they were falling from the sky. Not possible unless they were above water (which, granted, is possible for short periods), which would go against the fact that they were fish.

>Not possible

Stuff rains down from the sky, stuff enters water, fish start breathing in the stuff that rained down from the sky as more of the same stuff continues to rain down from the sky I don't know, seems possible to me.

Presumably fish don't breathe things that are in the sky

Things that are in the sky can fall into the water. “Rained down from the sky” implies this pretty plainly when the context is talking about fish, who are generally understood to be down below the sky in… water. “Down from,” not “in” the sky.

Not to mention that the fish in question seem to have been in a shallow "sloshing flood" at the time.

It says "as it rained down" from the sky -- once it hits the water it is no longer raining down.

I think it’s a reasonable assumption that once they were breathing it, there was more of it concurrently raining down, so the description seems fine to me.

It would continue to fall through the water but a lower speed. The water would be filled with tectonic debris which the fish breathed in.