New Delhi: The discovery of a tooth fossil belonging to a capybara that lived in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile almost nine million years ago has stunned scientists.
Native to South America, except Chile, the capybara is the largest rodent and can be found living near water bodies due to its semi-aquatic lifestyle.
"Finding a capybara tooth in a marine deposit in what today is one of the driest regions on Earth is just freakish," lead author Priscilla Martinez, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona's department of geosciences, said.
The Andean mountain chain would have presented a formidable barrier jutting up to 18,000 feet, beginning long before capybaras appeared roughly nine million years ago, geologists have previously estimated.
It effectively walled off the Atacama Desert from the eastern lowlands stretching across parts of Venezuela and Colombia down to northeastern Argentina and Uruguay, the animal's current range, they said.
New Delhi: The discovery of a tooth fossil belonging to a capybara that lived in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile almost nine million years ago has stunned scientists.
The finding not only provides the first and oldest record of a capybara in coastal Chile, a country where no capybaras live today, but it also calls into question the longstanding textbook version of the Atacama Desert being one of the oldest continuously dry regions on Earth, going back an estimated 40 million years, they said.
Native to South America, except Chile, the capybara is the largest rodent and can be found living near water bodies due to its semi-aquatic lifestyle.
The fossil, described in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, was found in a layer of sediments deposited in a shallow marine environment between 10 and seven million years ago, at a site called El Morro, the researchers said.
El Morro is part of the fossil-rich Bahia Inglesa Formation, which also hosts Cerro Ballena, or "Whale Hill", recognised as the world's largest concentration of whale fossils.
"Finding a capybara tooth in a marine deposit in what today is one of the driest regions on Earth is just freakish," lead author Priscilla Martinez, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona's department of geosciences, said.
The Andean mountain chain would have presented a formidable barrier jutting up to 18,000 feet, beginning long before capybaras appeared roughly nine million years ago, geologists have previously estimated.
It effectively walled off the Atacama Desert from the eastern lowlands stretching across parts of Venezuela and Colombia down to northeastern Argentina and Uruguay, the animal's current range, they said.
