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69 Million-year-old Crab Fossil may Rewrite Evolutionary History of the Species
Cornell paleontologist Greg Dietl was the one who recognized the 67- to 69-million-year-old fossil from the late Cretaceous period of a big crab with an oversized right claw, which was kept in a museum display case in the state of Chiapas, Mexico.
Such crabs with claws of different sizes were not known to exist until the early Cenozoic era, about 20 million years later.
Aside from being larger than most known late Cretaceous crabs and having asymmetrical claws, this ancient crab also sported a curved tooth on the movable finger of the larger right claw. This was another specialized adaptation that paleontologists thought developed millions of years later for peeling snail shells open.
"The fossil re-opens the question of the role crabs played in the well-documented restructuring of marine communities that occurred during the Mesozoic era 251 million years ago to 65 million years ago," said Dietl.
The museum's staff showed Dietl and colleagues another fossil of the same species in a back room.
Both specimens, found near the town of Ocozocoautla in southeastern Mexico, are the oldest fossils with these unique features on record and represent a new species, Megaxantho zogue.
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