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Paleontologists in Spain have unearth a 4.5 million - year - old tooth that likely belonged to one of the last crocodiles in Europe .
The tooth is the only crocodilian fossil excavate from a site called Baza-1 in the southern province of Granada and indicates the predator looked similar to Nile crocodiles ( Crocodylus niloticus ) that live in Africa today .
Paleontologists unearthed a 4.5 million-year-old tooth, which represents the latest evidence of crocodiles living in Europe.
Baza-1 was first excavated in the former 2000s and has yielded more than 2,000 fogey , despite only cover an orbit of 323 solid feet ( 30 satisfying meter ) , according to a translatedstatement .
" The tooth we found at the land site of Baza-1 corresponds to a true crocodile , " saidBienvenido Martínez Navarro , a fossilist with the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies ( ICREA ) and enquiry prof at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution ( IPHES ) who co - contribute the recent excavations . " We have class it asCrocodylusbecause , at the moment , the only grounds of its presence at this site is this tooth , and we do n’t have enough anatomical resolving power to be more accurate , " Martínez Navarro tell Live Science in an electronic mail .
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Archaeologists excavate the Baza-1 site in the province of Granada, in southern Spain.
This is the most late evidence of a crocodile ever found in the fossil phonograph record in Europe , Martínez Navarro said . Until now , dodo suggestingcrocodilesroamed the continent occur from earlier deposits , including from the Miocene ( 23 million to 5.3 million class ago ) and from very early on during the Pliocene ( 5.3 million to 2.6 million eld ago ) .
crocodile probably bilk over from Africa to Europe around 6.2 million year ago , just before the Mediterranean Sea dried up during what is known as the Messinian salinity crisis , Martínez Navarro said .
The Messinian saltiness crisis was partially spark off by a global cooling event that lock in ocean urine up in glacier and iceberg , lower sea levels by about 230 foundation ( 70 meters ) , according to theUniversity of Maryland . This drop ensue in less pee flowing from the Atlantic Ocean into the Mediterranean . Meanwhile , architectonic shifts also caused the ocean floor around the Strait of Gibraltar to rise , isolating the Mediterranean , which ultimately became disconnected from the earth ’s oceans and dried up .
This entrust behind a huge expanse of saltup to 2 miles ( 3 kilometers ) thick in some topographic point , which scientists find buried beneath hundred of feet of deposit in the seventies .
" It was potential to walk from northerly Africa to the Iberian Peninsula , " Martínez Navarro said , add that several species would have crossed this area .
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The Messinian salinity crisis lasted roughly 700,000 years and ended abruptly when a gigantic upsurge of weewee known as the Zanclean rising tide — triggered by evaporated body of water fall to the oceans and erosion of the strip of land around Gibraltar — fill again the Mediterranean Sea .
African crocodile that obtain their room to modern - twenty-four hour period Spain and Portugal likely disappear when the climate became stale and drier during the Pliocene , Martínez Navarro enounce . The former Pliocene , however , was characterized by a tropic climate that patronage a rich assemblage of animals — include now - extinct elephants , reptiles , amphibians and Pisces — whose remains were also unearthed at the situation where the tooth was find .
Researchers hope the fossil unearthed at Baza-1 will help them reconstruct a decisive moment in paleohistory , when species migrated from Africa to Europe , Martínez Navarro say .
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