Ancient salamander in amber is a scientific surprise

“I used to be shocked once I first noticed it in”, stated George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus within the OSU School of Science, and a world professional within the research of bugs, crops and different life varieties preserved in amber, all of which permit researchers to reconstruct the ecology of historic ecosystems.

Fascinatingly, the preserved salamander appears to have come to an untimely demise.

According to Discovery News, the researchers discovered the specimen in modern day Dominican Republic, meaning the salamander lived in the Caribbean.

Scientists are learning a bit more about the evolution in the Caribbean with the help of the first ever salamander found frozen in amber.

The discovery reveals that there were once salamanders in the Caribbean.

The salamander was a never-before-seen extinct species of salamander that was dubbed Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae. It got into a kind of fight and lost its leg that was bitten off by a predator just before it managed to escape.

The of that occasion has revealed one thing not recognized earlier than – that salamanders as soon as lived on an island within the Caribbean Sea. “And finding it in Dominican amber was especially unexpected, because today no salamanders, even living ones, have ever been found in that region”.

The family in which the salamander belonged, Plethodontidae, is common in North America, especially the Appalachian Mountains.

“It had back and front legs lacking distinct toes, just almost complete webbing with little bumps on them”. The team found the fossil in an amber mine in a mountains existing between Puerto Plata and Santiago. They say that the due to this, salamander might have lived on smaller trees or on tropical flowering plants.

While the fossil is between 20 and 30 million years old, its lineage may stretch back as far as 60 million years when the Proto-Greater Antilles, which now included islands such as Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, was joined to North and South America. Poinar affirmed that the discovery confirms one thing that was once salamanders in the Caribbean, but it continues to be a mystery as to where they all have gone. Scientists suggest that they could have been killed by a climatic event or they were vulnerable to some kind of predator. They also may have crossed a land bridge during periods of low sea level, or it’s possible a few specimens could have floated in on debris, riding a log across the ocean.

These findings could help scientists get a clearer picture of the ancient events that shaped Earth’s history.