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Antarctic fossil prompts rethink about amphibian history
2007-04-03
The fossilised remains of an amphibian which lived more than 245 million years ago have been found in Antarctica, suggesting that the climate during much of the Triassic era was remarkably balmy. The 60-centimetre (24-inch) piece of skull was teased out of thick sandstone at Fremouw Peak in the Transantarctic Mountains, just six degrees short of the South Pole. Palaeontologists in Europe and the United States have identified the beast as a Parotosuchus, a two-metre-long (6.5-feet) giant salamander-like predator that lived 40 million years before the first dinosaurs, inhabiting lakes and rivers. A member of the Temnospondyl group, Parotosuchus was covered in a scaly skin, unlike the smooth skin of modern-day amphibians, and probably moved with an eel-like motion in the water. Previous Parotosuchus remains have been found in Germany, Kazakhstan, Russia and South Africa -- until now the most southerly part of their range. Parotosuchus lived in an era when Africa and Antarctica are believed to have joined together in a supercontinent called Pangea. The researchers believe the new specimen shows that conditions were mild enough in the late Early or Middle Triassic period to let a cold-blooded creature live near Pangea's southern margin, seasonally at least. The paper is authored by palaeontologists at the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington state; at France's National Museum of Natural History; and at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. It appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.
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