Giant Salamander-Like Fossil Discovered in Namibia

“It has huge canines, and the entire front of the mouth is giant teeth,” study co-author Jason DePardo of the Negaunee Center for Integrative Research at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago said at a news conference. statement.

The research team, led by Claudia A. Marsicano of the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Pardo, described the discovery as “a new, exceptionally large aquatic tetrapod” that “provides important information about the tetrapods that inhabited the high latitudes of Gondwana,” referring to the polar regions of the southern landmass in prehistoric times.

“This is a remarkable discovery that challenges the belief that early land animals (tetrapods) were mostly found near the equator in coal-producing wetlands,” wrote Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the Dinosaur Laboratory at the University of Queensland in Australia, who was not involved in the study, in an email.

“Jayasia “The discovery in the cooler, high-latitude southern regions of the ancient supercontinent suggests that early tetrapods were more widespread and adaptable to different climates than previously thought,” he said.

Christian A. Sidor, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Washington, who was also not part of the research team, books In an article published in the journal Nature, he noted that this discovery helped “fill a gap in the fossil record” because it was found in “a place and time that no paleontologist would have expected.”

This creature lived about 280 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period. Permian Period The period when there was one continent, Pangaea – and about 40 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared, was time From other predators such as DimetrodonIt is a carnivorous animal with a sail on its back. HelicoproneA shark-like fish with spirally arranged teeth.

Jayasia Genea This species was “ancient” even for its time, Pardo said, surviving about 40 million years after most of its relatives went extinct, at the end of the Ice Age when new animal lineages were forming.

It was named after the Jays Formation in Namibia where the fossils were found and in honor of paleontologist Jenny Clarke, who died in 2020. Scientists pieced together information about the creature from four specimens.