Over the past three decades, paleontologists have discovered pre -green and prehistoric greenhouse teeth on the Caribbean islands. The strange part? According to scientists, owners of such teeth – remote land predators – were never supposed to exist there.
But an international team of researchers noted that millions of years ago, an incredibly high crocodile-type predator called sebécide traveled the Caribbean-there until about five million years ago, long after the deaths of its South American relatives about 11 million years ago. The results reinforce the theory that terrestrial bridges or a chain of islands have once connected the Caribbean to South America.
In 2023, the researchers found another fossilized tooth in the Dominican Republic, this time with two vertebrae, allowing them to identify the remains belonging to the sebecids. As detailed in a study published Wednesday in the acts of the Royal Society B, experts are dated fossils between 7.14 and 4.57 million years – more than three million years after the disappearance of their South American cousins. “This emotion to find the fossil and to achieve what it is, it is indescribable,” said the main author of the Lazaro Viñola Lopez study, paleobiologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, in a museum press release.
According to the press release, some sebecids – described as a large “crocodile[s] Built like a greyhound “- could reach up to 20 feet (6.1 meters) long. They were eaters of meat, chasing after their prey of four long legs. In South America, they were the only members of Notosuchia – a large group of extinguished crocodilians – to survive the infamous asteroid that decimated the game of dinosares 66 million years ago.
But how could land predators have reached Caribbean islands? The researchers say that these results support the hypothesis of Gaarlandia – the idea that millions of years ago, earthly bridges or island chains, South American animals and sebecids reach the Caribbean. When the passage has disappeared, the sebecids would have been isolated from any threat which made their loved ones disappear in South America to millions of years before them.
If the researchers confirm that the strange teeth of the other islands also belonged to the sebecids, this means that these Apex predators had an impact on the ecology of the region for millions of years. It is despite the fact that “you could not have predicted this by looking at the modern ecosystem,” said Jonathan Bloch, co-author of the study and preservative of the paleontology of vertebrates at Florida Museum of Natural History. Today, most of the Caribbean predators, such as birds, snakes and even crocodiles, are much smaller.
Nevertheless, the study shows that where there is smoke, there is probably a fire – or in this case, a croc sprint and extinguished built like a greyhound.
