Sep. 7 () –
Scientists have identified a new species of long-extinct otter in Ethiopia that was the size of a modern lion.
With an estimated weight of 200 kilograms, it is the largest otter ever described.; It would have rubbed elbows, and possibly competed for food, with our much smaller ancestors when it lived alongside them 3.5 million to 2.5 million years ago. An article describing the animal has just appeared in the French science journal Comptes Rendus Palevol.
“The peculiar thing, besides its massive size, is that [los isótopos] in its teeth suggest it was not aquatic, like all modern otters,” said it’s a statement study co-author Kevin Uno, a geochemist at the Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “We found that it had a diet of land animals, which also differs from modern otters.”
Current otters weigh from 4 to 13 pounds for the Asian small-clawed otter, up to about 70 pounds for the South American giant otter, and 100 pounds for the North Pacific sea otter. Various giant otters are known to have populated Eurasia and Africa from about 6 to 2 million years ago. Among these, the extinct genus Enhydriodon is the best known because its remains, although fragmentary, have been found in many places, particularly in East Africa. The newly described species has been named Enhydriodon omoensis, after the Lower Omo Valley in southwestern Ethiopia, where it was discovered.
The fossils were discovered by various international excavation teams over the years. The authors of the new study, led by Camille Grohé of the University of Poitiers, based their estimates of body mass on the dimensions of the animals’ teeth and femurs..
Traditionally, otters of the genus Enhydriodon have been considered semi-aquatic, feeding on molluscs, turtles, crocodiles, and catfish, all common in freshwater environments in Africa. One tested this idea by analyzing stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon in the tooth enamel of Enhydriodon omoensis..
The relative values of stable oxygen isotopes can give an indication of the habitat an animal occupies. Presumably, the values in the fossil otter should have been close to those in fossil hippos or other semi-aquatic animals. In contrast, the Omo giant otter had values similar to those of land mammals, in particular the big cats and hyenas from the Omo fossil deposits.
Carbon isotopes in teeth can provide information about the type of prey a creature consumes. These revealed that Enhydriodon omoensis was capable of hunting prey that consumed a wide variety of terrestrial plants, from tropical grasses to tree vegetation.
The authors plan to sample African otter fossils more widely for studies of tooth enamel and the shape and structure of long bones, in order to understand what place these giant otters occupied in past ecosystems and the causes of their extinction. about 2 million years ago.
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