But its misfortune has sparked a knowledge trifecta for scientists from Oregon State University (OSU) and the University of California at Berkeley. It's the first salamander fossil ever to be found encased in amber; it's from a never-before-seen and now extinct species; and it confirms that salamanders once lived in the Caribbean, a place they are not found today.
The crime scene paints a grim picture for the poor salamander, which was just a baby. It got into a skirmish of some kind and had a leg bitten off, and then it somehow became stuck for eternity in a resin deposit.
The scientists were stunned by their find.
"There are very few salamander fossils of any type, and no one has ever found a salamander preserved in amber," said George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus in the OSU College of Science, in a press release. "And finding it in Dominican amber was especially unexpected, because today no salamanders, even living ones, have ever been found in that region."
The family in which the salamander belonged, Plethodontidae, is common in North America, especially the Appalachian Mountains. But the newly discovered salamander did not have distinctive back- or front-leg toes (see artist's conception above). Instead, it had a kind of webbing that might have made it a not terribly expert climber, when compared to some species today, the scientists said. As a result, they say, the salamander may have lived in smaller trees or on tropical flowering plants.
The team found its all-star specimen in an amber mine in a mountainous region between Puerto Plata and Santiago.
Read more at Discovery News
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