Discovery of a salamander in amber sheds light on evolution of Caribbean islands

Discovery of a salamander in amber sheds light on evolution of Caribbean islands
August 17, 2015 05:55 PM


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This is the first-ever discovery of a salamander preserved in amber, from an unlikely spot -- the Dominican Republic, where all salamanders are now extinct.
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More than 20 million years ago, a short struggle took place in what is now the Dominican Republic, resulting in one animal getting its leg bitten off by a predator just before it escaped. But in the confusion, it fell into a gooey resin deposit, to be fossilized and entombed forever in amber.

The fossil record of that event has revealed something not known before - that salamanders once lived on an island in the Caribbean Sea. Today, they are nowhere to be found in the entire Caribbean area.

The never-before-seen and now extinct species of salamander, named Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae by the authors of the paper, adds more clues to the ecological and geological history of the islands of the Caribbean. Findings about its brief life and traumatic end - it was just a baby - have been published in the journal Palaeodiversity, by researchers from Oregon State University and the University of California at Berkeley.

"I was shocked when I first saw it in amber," said George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus in the OSU College of Science, and a world expert in the study of insects, plants and other life forms preserved in amber, all of which allow researchers to reconstruct the ecology of ancient ecosystems.

More:
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2015/08/17/discovery_of_a_salamander_in_amber_sheds_light_on_evolution_of_caribbean_islands.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+biologynews%2Fheadlines+%28Biology+News+Net%29