20-million-year-old tusked sea cow is Central America's oldest marine mammal
Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - 18:20
in Paleontology & Archaeology
A researcher searching the shoreline of the Panama Canal for fossil plants instead found an ancient sea cow. An 'emergency fossil excavation' due to rising water levels yielded a remarkably complete skeleton of a new genus and species of dugong, estimated to be about 20 million years old, the first evidence of a marine mammal from the Pacific side of the canal.