A group of Scientists and researchers found in the Colombian town of Socha, in the central department of Boyacá, a fossil
of giant tortoise dating back 57 million years, The Universidad del Rosario reported this Wednesday.
At 1.5 meters long, the turtle shell thatWhat the researchers found allows the development of a better biogeographic distribution of Paleocene fauna in northern South America.
The discovery was published this Wednesday in the magazine of the Argentine Paleontological Association PeAPA, where they also detailed that they also located 58 specimens of the complete shell. with which they were able to identify at least 21 individuals, including offspring, young people and adults.
The investigation was led by the Colombian Edwin Cadena, paleontologist and professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Universidad del Rosario, who celebrated the importance of the discoveries.
“It is a species that previously sWe only knew about the Cerrejón coal mine (in the desert department of La Guajira) and found it 500 kilometers to the south now in Socha allows us to reconstruct and understand what the landscape and environments of Colombia were like 57 million years ago,” Cadena explained.
The species of turtle found It is the ‘Puentemys mushaisaensis’, and the project was the result of a joint work between one of the leaders of the Socha community, the painter Byron Benítez, who is responsible for finding most of the fossils in this area, in addition to paleontologists and geologists from Colombia and the United States.
With this discovery The department of Boyacá adds merits to continue being one of the areas of the country with the most importance for the development of protection plans and management of paleontological heritage.
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