Why did you know until now what it is? Researchers identified a new species of prehistoric animal in Chile after 18 years. Yes, the bones of this species were found on the coast of this South American country, but it was not until 2023 that they managed to find out what it was.
A new species of prehistoric animal in Chile
According to a study published in the Journal of Mammalian Evolutionresearchers identified a new species of prehistoric animal from the fossil remains that were found on the coast of Chile, in the English Bay.
Yes, it would be a herbivorous animal that looked a lot like a guanaco, or a llama. In addition, they indicated that it all began with the discovery of fossils made up of a jaw, cervical and thoracic vertebrae, phalanges and other bones. 18 years ago in a coastal town located 870 kilometers north of Santiago.
It was from that moment that they were kept in the National Museum of Natural History of Chile, but they had not been identified until now.
What do you know about this prehistoric animal?
It was in 2016 that experts from the University of Chile and the University of Edinburgh decided to examine the fossils, with which they concluded that it was a new species and smaller than a macrauchenidan extinct mammal that inhabited Chile seven million years ago.
And although it may look like a guanaco or a llama, the researchers say that this new species has no relationship with these animals.
Now this newly identified prehistoric animal has been named as Micrauchenia saladensis.
“When the first of them was described, they were associated with camelids, like llamas or camels. It was thought that they were related, but now we know that this is not the case.explained Hans Püschel, lead author of the study, in a statement from the University of Chile.
How was it?
Although they have represented it as an animal with a trunk, experts are not so clear if it really had one: “It has a kind of hole that suggests there is a muscle attachment of some kind, but it doesn’t look like anything we have today”he explained.
However, he added that a study suggests it was actually more like a lip that moose have; not a trunk like an elephant’s. For this reason, they cannot speculate what the function of this part of his body was.
Anyway… this new species of prehistoric animal discovered in Chile would have weighed between 53 and 102 kilosless than other similar species, which would have weighed up to a ton.
