A sub-desert savannah spread across Madrid 14 million years ago
November 20, 2017
The Central Iberian Peninsula was characterised by an arid savanna during the middle Miocene, according to a study led by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) comparing mammal populations from different localities in Africa and South Asia with those that inhabited the Iberian central area 14 million years ago.
The results of this study, recently published in PLOS ONE, are the product of more than 15 years of fieldwork and previous paleontological studies of the fossil vertebrate remains found at the Somosaguas paleontological site (Madrid), which allowed paleontologists to infer the type of environment that existed in the middle Miocene in the central part of the Iberian Peninsula. This fossil site is located at the Somosaguas Campus of the UCM. Only two paleontological sites have been discovered so far at university campuses worldwide (the other one being located in the U.S.).
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2017-11-sub-desert-savannah-madrid-million-years.html#jCp
