The first-ever salamander found preserved in amber has given scientists a glimpse into what life was like on the Caribbean Islands more than 20 million years ago.
The doomed baby salamander had its leg bit off by a predator before it fell into a gooey resin container to be preserved forever, Oregon State University reported. Today salamanders cannot be found in the Caribbean area, but the recent findings reveals that was not always the case.
"I was shocked when I first saw it in amber," said George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus in the OSU College of Science. "There are very few salamander fossils of any type, and no one has ever found a salamander preserved in amber, and finding it in Dominican amber was especially unexpected, because today no salamanders, even living ones, have ever been found in that region."
The salamander was a never-before-seen extinct species of salamander that was dubbed Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae. It belonged to the family Plethodontidae, members of which can still be seen in North America today. The ancient salamander's lack of distinct back toes suggest it was not as talented of a climber as modern species and likely lived in small trees or flowering plants.
"The discovery of this fossil shows there once were salamanders in the Caribbean, but it's still a mystery why they all went extinct," Poinar said. "They may have been killed by some climatic event, or were vulnerable to some type of predator."
The specimen most likely dates back to a time when islands such as Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, were still joined to mainland South America. It has also been suggested the salamanders crossed a land bridge during time when the sea level was low. These findings could help scientists get a clearer picture of the ancient events that shaped Earth's history.
"There have been fossils of rhinoceroses found in Jamaica, jaguars in the Dominican Republic, and the tree that produced the Dominican amber fossils is most closely related to one that's native to East Africa," Poinar said. "All of these findings help us reconstruct biological and geological aspects of ancient ecosystems."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Palaeodiversity.
