A 9-Million-Year-Old Tooth Just Challenged What Scientists Thought They Knew About the Atacama Desert
5 Articles
5 Articles
Scientists have found that 8.8 million years ago the Atacama Desert was inhabited by capybaras
A 9-Million-Year-Old Tooth Just Challenged What Scientists Thought They Knew About the Atacama Desert
Scientists were surprised to discover a fossilized tooth from a capybara that lived almost 9 million years ago in what is now northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. Chile’s Atacama Desert is an unlikely place to find traces of capybaras, the world’s largest living rodents, whose lives revolve around water and wetland plants. Yet a fossilized tooth [...]
Highlights Tooth almost 9 million years old: The fossil was found in the Bahía Inglesa Formation in northern Chile. Signs of ancient humid environments: Freshwater fish, gavials, palm trees and other plants reinforce the idea of a very different scenario from the current one. Paradigm put in question: The discovery questions the hypothesis that...
The Atacama, in northern Chile, is considered to be the driest place on the planet, arid without any respite. A vestige exhumed from its sediments, however, contradicts this reputation. This capybara fossil tells of a past where rivers and palm trees covered this corner of the desert.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is bone-dry. But that was not always the case, as a fossil from the Miocene shows. There must have been swamps here.
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