Paleontologists discovered 57 million year old giant tortoise fossils ancient in Colombia, reported this Tuesday the university that led the exploration, whose results are key to understanding the geography of South America in the Paleocene and Eocene eras.
The fossils of the Puentemys mushaisaensis reptiles, which were estimated to measure about 1.5 meters long, were found in the mountainous municipality of Socha, the Universidad del Rosario said in a statement.
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The discovery is unprecedented in this Andean area, since the closest specimens of this species are hundreds of kilometers in El Cerrejóna coal mine near the Caribbean Sea.
Finding them 500 kilometers to the south (…) allows us to reconstruct and understand what the landscapes of northern South America were like, because instead of the current Andean mountains of up to more than 5 thousand meters above sea level there were “connected lakes and mountain ranges of very low altitude,” explained Edwin Cadena, the paleontologist in charge of the research.
The study “allows us to better understand the Connectivity of the aquatic environments of northern South America during a part of geological time known as the Paleocene and Eocene,” the statement added.
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Both eras are part of the Paleogene (66 to 23 million years ago), the first geological period after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
With information from AFP.
ORP
