Fossil Find Suggests S. America, India Were Still Linked 65 Million Years Ago

Fossils of small mammals once thought to be unique to South America have been found in India and Madagascar, providing new evidence that those areas were linked in the massive supercontinent of Gondwana as recently as 65 million years ago. The fossils are from the Late Cretaceous period, about 65 million to 70 million years ago, when some researchers believe the continents had already gone their separate ways.

A team from the State University of New York at Stony Brook reports the discovery of the fossils, which have distinctive teeth, in today’s Nature. The finding supports a recent geophysical model suggesting that land bridges persisted between the regions until the end of the Late Cretaceous. The fossils, called gondwanatheres, have not been found in Africa, confirming the previous belief that it broke away from Gondwana much earlier.