Cuban scientists find Ancient Fossils in Cave

[L Roebuck]

Cuban scientists find 18-20 million-year-old fossils
China View www.chinaview.cn

HAVANA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Cuban scientists have found a series of fossils they believe to be between 18 and 20 million years old in the central Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus, the island's Caving Society said on Monday.

The fossils are the remains of dugongs and giant crocodiles that lived in the area in the Miocene period, the fourth era of the Tertiary age, which began 23 million years ago and ended 5 million years ago, it said.

The fossils were found in a cave close to the banks of the Cayajana River, 350 km east of Havana. The scientists made the find 30 meters below the slope eroded by the river, considered a highly valuable area by scientists seeking fossils.

The Caribbean's oldest fossils, including a giant sloth, giant ostriches, a shark and several dugongs, were also found by the same research group in the 1970s in Domo Zaza, a paleontological site also in Sancti Spiritus province.

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[kenredux]

HAVANA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Cuban scientists have found a series of fossils they believe to be between 18 and 20 million years old in the central Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus, the island's Caving Society said on Monday.

]... The fossils are the remains of dugongs and giant crocodiles that lived in the area in the Miocene period, the fourth era of the Tertiary age, which began 23 million years ago and ended 5 million years ago, it said.

The fossils were found in a cave close to the banks of the Cayajana River, 350 km east of Havana. The scientists made the find 30 meters below the slope eroded by the river, considered a highly valuable area by scientists seeking fossils....

What with the Chinese reporting what the Cubian scientists said it might be in order to point out that the dugongs and giant crocodiles were likely found within the limestone matrix of the cave and not in the alluvium. The caves themselves are but a few hundred of thousand years old.

[Brian Roebuck]

Good point Ken. As I recall Cuba wasn't even there 23 million years ago much less that particular cave.