Nueva investigación del Departamento de Paleontología de Vertebrados del Museo de Historia Natural descubre siete especies de cocodrilos de 13 millones de años en un sitio fosilífero de 20 m2 de la amazonia peruana. Antes del establecimiento del río Amazonas, esta enorme biodiversidad estaba ligada a ambientes pantanosos y, aunque parezca increíble, a la abundancia de moluscos.
Seven 13-million-year-old crocodilian species were found in the Peruvian Amazon by investigators of the Department of Vertebrates Paleontology, of the Natural History Museum attached to the Universidad Nacional Mayor de Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM).
These were located in a 20-square-meters site (about 215 square feet) in the Peruvian Amazonia.
Before the Amazon river was formed, this large biodiversity was connected to swamps, and even to mollusks.
The UNMSM highlighted this work that was led by Peruvian researcher Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, an investigator in charge of the aforementioned Department.
The discovery has been published in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society B" biological research journal.
It actually provides information based on important evidence to learn about the history related to the great Amazonian diversity.
Salas-Gismondi is also a doctoral student at Université de Montpellier, in France.
John Flynn is also an author of the aforementioned publication, who works as a curator of the Fossil Mammals Collection at the American Museum of Natural History’s traveling exhibition. "The modern Amazon River basin contains the world's richest biota, but the origins of this extraordinary diversity are really poorly understood," he said.
"Because it's a vast rainforest today, our exposure to rocks--and therefore, also to the fossils those rocks may preserve--is extremely limited. So anytime you get a special window like these fossilized "mega-wetland" deposits, with so many new and peculiar species, it can provide novel insights into ancient ecosystems. And what we've found isn't necessarily what you would expect," Flynn told.
Another author of the publication is Pierre-Olivier Antoine, Professor of Paleontology at the Université Montpellier. According to Antoine, only fossils let us know how the Amazonian system was originated and how it used to work in the past.
Fossils, vertebrates in particular, are hard to find. Even finding a site in these hard conditions of work in the Amazon is really a tough task, he admitted.
Since 2002, an international team composed of Peruvian, North American and European scientists has been prospecting and exploring fossil outcrops in the surroundings of Iquitos, which preserve life evidence during Miocene.
The results of this study, including the seven species of the crocodiles and evidence about the ecosystems from that age, have been published by the English research journal "Proceedings B".
There, new species are introduced. The strangest one is Gnatusuchus pebasensis, a short-faced caiman, with a very short and wide snout, a "shovel" shaped jaw and globular teeth in the back section of its mouth.
Other authors of the publication are: Patrice Baby, Julia Tejada-Lara and Frank Wesselingh.
The paleontological remains are permanently placed in the Paleontology Department of the UNMSM.
This exploration was financed by NASA; The Field Museum (Chicago); AMNH Frick Fund (New York); ECLIPSE program (France); National Center for Scientific Research (France); Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (France); and the French-Peruvian Doctoral School for Life Sciences (doctoral grant to Salas-Gismondi).
Published: 2/26/2015