This site was discovered after 70 years ago but was not traced.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Scientists have finally rediscovered a lost fossil site in Brazil. This site was discovered after 70 years ago scientists were unable to trace their way to the isolated site.
Reported from Live Science, Saturday (26/6/2022) the treasure in question is a paleontological heritage that can provide insight into one of the largest extinction events in Earth’s history.
In the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, near the border Brazil with Uruguay, there is a site flat hill which has just been rediscovered.
The conditions at the site were perfect for capturing and harboring a species that had died out about 260 million years ago, near the end of the Permian (299 million to 251 million years ago).
Because plants don’t have hard parts, they often don’t fossilize like animals do. As a result some rocky layers at Cerro Chato are full of fine fossils, especially animal fossils.
The incredibly well-preserved Permian bones atop Cerro Chato thrilled paleontologists when they first discovered them in 1951.
Researchers attempted to return to the Permian treasure trove but were unsuccessful, as they were unable to precisely record the exact geographic coordinates of the site. This is due to a lack of recognizable features or contemporary tools like GPS.
The team declared the place lost after many attempts to get back on their trail. But in 2019, a new team of academics did a search and found the place.
Both the original researchers and the co-authors of the new paper have found more than 100 fossils at Cerro Chato. Most sites contain plants with few fish and mollusks. According to experts, some of the plant fossils are relatives of ferns and conifers found today.
The new team believes that these fossils represent only the tip of the iceberg. Although Cerro Chato was rediscovered nearly three years ago, there is still much to be covered as the original researchers were only able to erode the surface of the fossil bed before losing track of the site.
Joseane Salau Ferraz of the Federal University of Pampa in Rio Grande do Sul, the study’s lead author, said in a release that the area to be studied was enormous.
“We haven’t even checked 30 percent of the total space, by my estimation,” he added.
Cerro Chato’s plant fossils may shed more light on the dramatic climate changes that occurred at the end of the Permian and caused the extinction of about 90 percent of all life on Earth.
The fossils we examined are significant on a global scale because they provide direct evidence of environmental changes that occurred during the Permian epoch.
“This investigation will help us find data regarding the global distribution of this plant,” he said.
The report is accessible for download in English and Portuguese and published online by scientists on 15 May in the journal Paleodest dari Brazilian Society of Paleontology.
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