{"id":25431,"date":"2019-02-26T14:53:01","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T19:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/?p=25431"},"modified":"2019-02-26T14:53:01","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T19:53:01","slug":"scientist-accidentally-discovers-20-million-year-old-tusked-sea-cow-panama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/scientist-accidentally-discovers-20-million-year-old-tusked-sea-cow-panama\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientist accidentally discovers 20-million-year-old tusked sea cow in Panama"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A researcher\u00a0inadvertently discovered the remains of Central America<\/a>\u2019s oldest marine mammal \u2013 a 20-million-year-old tusked sea cow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Steven Manchester, a curator of paleobotany at the Florida Museum of Natural History, had been looking for fossil plants when he stumbled across bones during fieldwork close to the Panama Canal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The researcher had split off from a group of vertebrate palaeontologists he was working with to inspect the shoreline for fossil leaves and petrified wood, when he saw parts of a skeleton sticking out of the bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe quickly walked us over to where he\u2019d found a skeleton sticking out of the rock exposure,\u201d said Aaron Wood, a museum postdoctoral researcher who led the fieldwork in Panama<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere were two or three vertebrae, orange-ish in colour, dipping into the black rock on the side of the canal and a couple of ribs around them. We guessed that there would be more under the rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers then performed what was described as an \u201cemergency fossil excavation\u201d, due to rising water levels in the canal, to reveal a \u201cremarkably complete\u201d ancient sea cow skeleton.<\/p>\n