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New Species of Ancient Amphibians Found in Africa
Wed Apr 13, 1:07 PM ET
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Fossils of two new species of 250 million year-old crocodile-like amphibians have been discovered in the African desert in Niger, scientists said on Wednesday.
Their skulls show they are unlike any other animals that existed during the Permian period 290-248 million years ago.
"They belong to a group that scientists had thought had gone extinct a long time earlier," said Dr. Christian Sidor, a palaeontologist at the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine in the United States.
"Our study highlights the interaction between climate and evolution of life on land," he told Reuters.
About 250 million years ago, much of the Earth's land mass was fused into one huge continent called Pangaea. Scientists had thought that the same type of animals could have existed and gone anywhere on the massive continent, but the newly found fossils were completely different.
Sidor and his team, who reported their findings in the science journal Nature, suspect the two new species were isolated in Niger, at the center of Pangaea, by its climate.
Dalje
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