For the first time, scientists were able to examine a salamander that had been preserved in amber.
According to Discovery News, the researchers discovered the specimen in modern day Dominican Republic, meaning the salamander lived in the Caribbean. Additionally, the salamander appears to be one of a kind, as its species has never been seen before and is now extinct.
Researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) and the University of California - Berkeley (UCB) collaborated on the study published in the journal Paleodiversity.
"I was shocked when I first saw it in amber," study co-author George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus in the OSU College of Science, said in a press release. "There are very few salamander fossils of any type, and no one has ever found a salamander preserved in amber.
"And finding it in Dominican amber was especially unexpected, because today no salamanders, even living ones, have ever been found in that region."
The researchers named the salamander Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae, as it shared several characteristics with the family of the amphibians common in North America. But what sets this one apart, Discovery News noted, is its back and the toes on its front legs.
Unlike the North American salamander, this Caribbean one was not an adept climber, as it likely lived among flowers and plants and trees. P. hispaniolae dated back about 20 million to 30 million years, but the researchers said salamanders could have existed about twice as long.
"The discovery of this fossil shows there once were salamanders in the Caribbean, but it's still a mystery why they all went extinct," Poinar said in the release. "They may have been killed by some climatic event, or were vulnerable to some type of predator."
