First-Ever Ancient Salamander Preserved in Amber Discovered in the Caribbean

First Posted: Aug 18, 2015 08:27 AM EDT

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 new specimen reveals that salamanders once lived on an island in the Caribbean, which is surprising since today they can be found nowhere in the Caribbean region.

The never-before-seen species of salamander, named Palaeonplethodon hispaniolae, adds more clues to the ecological and geological history of the islands of the Caribbean. Findings about its brief life and traumatic end were found after studying the specimen.

The salamander was just a baby, and had its leg bitten off by a predator before it escaped. But in the confusion, the salamander fell into a gooey resin deposit.

"I was shocked when I first saw it in amber," said George Poinar, one of the researchers, in a news release. "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 discovery reveals that there were once salamanders in the Caribbean. However, it's still a mystery as to why they all went extinct. It's possible that they could have been killed by a climatic event, or were vulnerable to some kind of predator.

"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," said Poinar. "All of these findings help us reconstruct biological and geological aspects of ancient ecosystems."

The findings are published in the journal Palaeodiversity.

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TagsFossil, fossils, Evolution, Caribbean, salamander, Salamanders, Extinct, Extinction