Researchers diving in Mexico ’s famous subaqueous cave , Hoyo Negro , have notice the skeletal remains of Ice Age predators opine to only exist in South America at that clip .
The Mexican and US team discovered the giant skull and other fossil remains of the long - extinctArctotherium wingei , from the family of short - faced bears , recollect to be the largest that ever lived , as well as the wolf - likeProtocyon genus Troglodytes .
Due to its tropical climate , parts of Mexico and Central America do not have a strong fossil record as conditions are not conducive to preserving ancient stiff . However , this particular cave in the Yucatan Peninsula is providing a whole riches of information on the brute – include world – of the recent Pleistocene thanks to it being a natural trap .
Hoyo Negro ( “ Black Hole ” ) , in the Sac Actun cave system , has a flooring 55 metre ( 180 feet ) below ocean spirit level , meaning around 11,000 long time ago , these animals likely fall nearly 60 meter ( 197 feet ) to their decease . Though dry then , it would later fill up with melting glacier water as the Ice Age come up to an ending , helping preserve their remains , and those of many other creatures that have also been found .
The researchers first came across the cave in 2007 , where they key out what we now fuck is the oldest complete frame establish in the Americas . NamedNaia , the cadaver are of a teenage female who lived between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago and died around age 17 .
In the years since then , skeletons of many creatures , both out and extant , have been found , including saber - toothed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , mountain lion , tapir , ground sloths , elephant - likegomphotheres , bears , and canids , but it ’s think the understandable excitement over the teenage remains meant the two long - nonextant species got overlooked , especially as it was accept they never got this far north . They were misidentified as a phallus of theTremarctosgenus ( spectacled bear ) and the coyoteCanis latrans .
Because the fossil record is so thin in Central America , this discovery is facilitate fill in some interruption about the dispersion of large mammals that roamed Earth during the last Ice Age . In their new study focusing onA. wingeiandP. troglodytes , published inBiology Letters , researchers revealed that finding these great predators more than 2,000 kilometers ( 1,200 mi ) from home suggests a much more complex history of fauna in the Americas .
Between 2.5 million and 3 million class ago , during what is known as theGreat American Biotic Interchange , terra firma and fresh water animals crossed from North America via Central America into South America , and vice versa , thanks to a land span that formed and connected the formerly separate continents .
During one of these crossovers , ursids and canids pass over from north to south . These evolve into their own metal money , like the two line up in the cave , only they have never been found outside of South America , so it had been assumed they remain there . This discovery offer up two likely theory : that some of the large carnivore stick around in Mexico rather than journey Dixie , or that they recrossed the kingdom bridge back into Central America . Hopefully , one day , more grounds will be able to sustain these events .
What can not be underrate is the importance of these underwater caves for offer us antecedently unknown glimpse into biography as the last Ice Age was coming to a ending .
