Fossil Horse
Teeth Found At Panama Canal
U.S. paleontologists have discovered a set
of fossil teeth in the Panama Canal
earthworks that belonged to a horse living
15 to 18 million years ago.
Aldo Rincon, a paleontology intern at the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute,
unearthed the set of fossil teeth that Bruce
MacFadden, curator of vertebrate
paleontology at the Florida Museum of
Natural History, described as being from
Anchitherium clarencei, a three-toed
browsing horse.
Expanding the Panama Canal to make way for
super-sized ships is providing geologists
and paleontologists with rare finds. Carlos
Jaramillo, senior scientist at the
institute, has, in collaboration with the
University of Florida and the Panama Canal
Authority, organized a team of researchers
and students who move in following dynamite
blasts to map and collect exposed fossils.
"This is one of very few places in the
tropics where we have access to fresh
outcrops before they are washed away by
torrential rains or overgrown by vegetation,
and we expect the fossils that we have been
salvaging to resolve some major scientific
mysteries," said Jaramillo. "What geological
forces combined to create the Panama land
bridge? Was the flora and fauna in Panama
before the land bridge closed similar to
that in North America, or did it include
other elements?"
The latest finding appears in the Journal of
Paleontology. |
