The species, which inhabited part of the sea that covered the country 135 million years ago, was found by a team of paleontologists from the Universidad del Rosario , from Bogotá, and the University of Zurich (Switzerland)
In the image, the flat-toothed shark fossil found in Santander, Colombia. Photo: Universidad del Rosario
In the Colombian municipality of Zapatoca, located in the department of Santander, a team of paleontologists discovered the fossil of a flat-toothed shark , thus becoming the first record of this extinct species found in the American continent.
The remains of the new marine creature, named Stropodus rebecae, were found by paleontologists Edwin Cadena, from the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Universidad del Rosario, and Jorge Carrillo, from the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
< blockquote class=”color_figcaption”>“What is relevant about this fossil species is that it constitutes the first record of a family of extinct flat-toothed sharks in the entire American continent,” Cadena stressed, while explaining that this shark inhabited Colombia 135 million years ago. during “the geological period known as the early Cretaceous”.
This species is characterized by having flat teeth, very similar to small dominoes that, according to the Colombian paleontologist, “they were used to crush food, rather than to cut and tear as in the case of the sharp teeth of most living sharks”.
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The discovery is added to the fossils of a pterosaur found by the same paleontologist from the Universidad del Rosario in July 2020, in the municipality of Zapatoca. The species, which lived about 135 million years old, it is a flying vertebrate reptile characterized by reaching five meters when it spread its wings, and for feeding mainly on crabs and fish, as the news agency found out EFE.
Cadena, according to the magazine Semana, has also been involved in other important discoveries in Colombian territory, that of the largest snake in the world, Titanoboa cerrejonensis, and the tortoise largest ever recorded, the Desmatochelys Padillai.
“We started to realize that, just like with humans, we don’t need to have a skeleton to be able to tell if it’s a new species or not. We had hominid species defined only with jaws and teeth, our dental chart is unique in a certain way and the same happens with certain groups of animals, such as these sharks, whose teeth are very particular, “said the Colombian paleontologist in dialogue with the Bogota media .
The finding, which continues to position Colombia as one of the countries that has made the most contributions to science in recent years, was published in the international scientific journal of public access, PeerJ, which can be consulted at the following link: https://peerj.com/articles/13496/.
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Fossils of insects that lived in Colombia more than 100 million years ago are found in La Calera
It should be remembered that the case of the flat-toothed shark is not the only fossil that has been found in Colombia in recent months. At the beginning of this 2022, the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Universidad del Rosario announced that a team of its paleontologists found in La Calera (Cundinamarca), two fossils of insects that inhabited in the geological period of the Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago.
The Universidad del Rosario reported to the newspaper El Espectador that the fossils found corresponded to a mayfly and a beetle, which measured 12 millimeters and half a centimeter, respectively. According to the institution, the bone remains were found in amber (fossilized resin of plant origin).