'Ice Age' Animal Fossils Found in Bolivia

A fossil deposit of prehistoric animals, dating from 300 to 400 million years ago, was discovered in southeastern Bolivia by a mission of Bolivian and Uruguayan paleontologists, scientists said on Wednesday.

The remains are spread over 60 hectares in the department of the state of Chuquisaca (southeast), a region that "is gradually becoming the mecca of world paleontology, " Omar Medina, president of the Paleontology University Scientific Society, told reporters. Sociupa).

Also located in Chuquisaca is the Cretaceous Park of Cal Orcko ("mountain of lime" in Quechua), which contains more than 5, 000 footprints of 294 dinosaur species that lived between the end of the Cretaceous period and the beginning of the Tertiary. 66 million years. At the site, "a very large space of time opens up in the history of the planet, " added Pablo Toriño, paleontologist at the National University of Uruguay.

"We passed the extinction of the dinosaurs and came to the Cenozoic era; within it, the Quaternary period, a huge time lapse. And if we add the fossils of the Devonian, which are in Sucre, we are talking about a story of 300 or 400 million. of years, "explained Toriño.

With research still in its early stages, Medina estimates that "surely the magnitude of these deposits will present some new species. The amount of things that can be found is not discarded by the size of this deposit."

"It could be an elephant cemetery, this must be studied, it has to be further studied, " Medina said. His Uruguayan colleague added that "seeing the movie (Ice Age), this is the fauna that is spoken here in Bolivia, exactly". Toriño told the press that "was found last weekend what appears to be a large hip piece of one of these animals."

"We also saw molars and various parts of glyptodonts and also many mastodons." The greatest scientific interest is in glyptodon, a giant armadillo species, extinct 100, 000 years ago. The deposit is in the municipality of Padilla, 180 km from Sucre.

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