Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 01 May 2013 Time: 05:00 PM ET
A cavern in Spain may have lured ancient carnivores to their deaths by offering the promise of food and water, new research suggests.
The new study, published today (May 1) in the journal PLOS ONE, may explain how the carcasses of several carnivore species, including saber-toothed cats and "bear dogs," wound up in an underground cavern millions of years ago.
"Only the carnivores were daring enough to enter," said study co-author M. Soledad Domingo, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan. "But they were unable to make their way out."
Surprise discovery
In 1991, miners drilling about 18.7 miles (30 kilometers) outside Madrid, Spain, uncovered animal bones and called in local paleontologists to excavate. They uncovered a series of underground caverns full of animal fossils — including the remains of red pandas, bear dogs and saber-toothed cats, as well as ancient animals related to modern elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses and horses. To date, nearly 18,000 fossils have been recovered from the area.
The so-called Cerro de los Batallones caves formed between 9 million and 10 million years ago in a process known as piping, where sediment falls into cracks or fissures in the surface, carving out hollow spaces in the soft, claylike Earth. Unlike other "pipes" formed in clay that quickly disappear, however, the holes stayed open longer because the area also contained a harder type of rock to buttress the burgeoning caves.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!