Scientists have found the remains of a prehistoric salamander in the Krasnoyarsk Territory

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Scientists have found the remains of a prehistoric salamander in the Krasnoyarsk Territory
Scientists have found the remains of a prehistoric salamander in the Krasnoyarsk Territory
Anonim

Russian paleontologists have discovered on the territory of the Krasnoyarsk Territory the remains of one of the first salamanders on Earth with an unusual anatomy. This was announced on Wednesday by the press service of the St. Petersburg State University (SPbSU) with reference to an article in the journal PLoS One.

“We named this salamander in honor of Yegor Malashichev, associate professor of the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at St. Pavel Skuchas, whose words are quoted by the press service of the university.

Skuchas and his colleagues discovered a new species of ancient amphibians, named Egoria malashichevi, during excavations in the vicinity of the village of Nikolskoye in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where the rocks of the Itat Formation that arose in the middle of the Jurassic period lie. In recent years, scientists have found inside them many prints of the bodies of ancient animals, including primitive turtles, crocodiles, dwarf "cousins" of tyrannosaurs, as well as primitive mammals.

Jurassic salamanders

The discovery of the remains of "Egoria", as Skuchas notes, is interesting for the reason that Russian paleontologists have already found the imprints of the bodies of two other species of these amphibians, very unlike Egoria malashichevi. Representatives of one of them had significantly larger body sizes than the new find of scientists. The latter were significantly smaller than the "yogrii", and at the same time the anatomy of their bodies was closer to modern salamanders than to primitive ancient amphibians.

Accordingly, the existence of three species of salamanders at the same point in space, according to the paleontologist, suggests that these ancient animals occupied different ecological niches. Russian researchers believe that primitive salamanders inhabited large reservoirs, and the relatives of modern amphibians - small rivers and lakes.

In turn, the "Yegori" occupied an intermediate position - they were much closer to the giant primitive salamanders in terms of body structure, but at the same time they were more similar to modern amphibians in size and habitat.

In the past, paleontologists have not yet found medium-sized salamanders in Jurassic sediments. Why this is so is not yet clear. On the one hand, it is quite possible that scientists were simply unlucky during excavations, but it cannot be ruled out that amphibians of this size were not competitive and quickly died out under the onslaught of their larger or smaller relatives.

As Skuchas noted, in the near future Russian paleontologists plan to compare the remains they found with the bones of ancient salamanders, which were found in Britain in sediments of the same time, lying in the vicinity of Oxford. This comparison, scientists hope, will help them uncover the reason for the rarity of medium-sized amphibians, as well as find out if they were common in other parts of Eurasia during the mid-Jurassic period.

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