Tuesday 20 September 2011

Beaver teeth found are 7m years old

A fossil found on government land is the earliest record of living beavers in North America.
The pair of teeth was found on Bureau of Land Management property in north-east Oregon.

The Albany Democrat-Herald said the teeth come from the Rattlesnake Formation and are 7-7.3 million years old.

The BLM says the earliest beavers were found in Germany 10 to 12 million years ago and the animals spread across Asia, eventually crossing the Bering Land Bridge to North America.

The previous earliest known records of living beavers in North America, from about five million years ago, were from Nebraska, California, and northern Oregon.

The fossils will be displayed at the Thomas Condon Palaeontology Centre at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

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