Prehistoric predator fossils found in an underwater cave in Mexico

Roberto Chavez-Arce

By Chelsea Whyte

Fossils of extinct bears and wolves from the head of the final glacial interval possess been learned in an underwater give intention Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The finds may maybe maybe encourage us higher realize how sizable prehistoric animals moved around the Americas.

With the support of legit divers, Blaine Schubert at East Tennessee Say University and his colleagues learned the trove of fossils in a cave whose floor is 55 metres below sea level. The positioning, known as Hoyo Negro, would possess been dry sooner than melting glaciers stuffed it with water, helping to relief the bones there.

The divers brought up intact skulls and other bones from two extinct animals. They learned fossils from seven members of the Arctotherium wingei, a smaller cousin of the immense short-faced bears that lived in South The us for the duration of the Pleistocene and are regarded as a truly principal bears ever.

The usage of effectively-preserved collagen from the roots of a teeth, Schubert and his group dated the have faith’s bones to about 11,000 years ago. The group additionally learned fossils of a wolf-care for animal known as Protocyon troglodytes.

“Most frequently as a palaeontologist, if I’m occurring a caving time out searching for ice age animals, I’m lucky to rep a teeth,” says Schubert. Hoyo Negro was once at the intersection of three passageways via the caves, increasing a natural trap where many animals met their loss of life. “This pit had various animal stays. The divers didn’t ought to impact any digging. These animals had been excellent laying on the floor, and a few possess been there for 30,000 years.”

The fossil anecdote in Central The us for this time is terribly sparse, so this cache is helping to own in gaps in our working out of how these animals migrated for the duration of the Americas. Earlier than this expedition, it was once idea that the have faith and wolf-care for animal had been most efficient whisper in South The us for the duration of this era.

About 3 million years ago, the Panama isthmus rose and created a land bridge between North and South The us, enabling what is identified because the Mountainous American Interchange – a interval by which Arctotherium and Protocyon had been idea to possess migrated south and stayed. “We had no anecdote of these animals making it again across that isthmus over again till now,” says Schubert.

Journal reference: Royal Society Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2019.0148