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Ah, timing...
May. 13th, 2011 05:28 pmSo, I posted my huge, 20,000 + J2 Lake Placid AU yesterday, and today I saw this:
Crocodiles swam the Atlantic to reach America - Millions of years before Vikings crossed the Atlantic, crocodiles swam thousands of kilometres from Africa to colonise the Americas.
The finding comes from the most complete evolutionary tree of the genus Crocodylus, featuring all but one of the living crocodile species. Evon Hekkala of Fordham University in New York and colleagues sequenced mitochondrial genomes of all 11 species, eight of which had not had their mitochondrial DNA sequenced before.
This revealed that all four American species are most closely related to the Nile crocodiles of east Africa, and must have split away roughly 7 million years ago, long after Africa and South America began drifting apart 130 million years ago. By 7 million years ago, over 2800 kilometres of ocean lay between the two continents.
Palaeontologists have long suspected that crocodiles swam the Atlantic, but Hekkala's finding is "strong evidence in support of that scenario", says Christopher Brochu of the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Ha! See, it could totally happen! ;)
Crocodiles swam the Atlantic to reach America - Millions of years before Vikings crossed the Atlantic, crocodiles swam thousands of kilometres from Africa to colonise the Americas.
The finding comes from the most complete evolutionary tree of the genus Crocodylus, featuring all but one of the living crocodile species. Evon Hekkala of Fordham University in New York and colleagues sequenced mitochondrial genomes of all 11 species, eight of which had not had their mitochondrial DNA sequenced before.
This revealed that all four American species are most closely related to the Nile crocodiles of east Africa, and must have split away roughly 7 million years ago, long after Africa and South America began drifting apart 130 million years ago. By 7 million years ago, over 2800 kilometres of ocean lay between the two continents.
Palaeontologists have long suspected that crocodiles swam the Atlantic, but Hekkala's finding is "strong evidence in support of that scenario", says Christopher Brochu of the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Ha! See, it could totally happen! ;)
