Meet Culebratherium, Central America's oldest sirenian

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A new genus of dugongine sirenian from Early Miocene age (20 million years old) remains from Panama in the area nearby the Panama Canal, marking the first known marine mammal fossil from the Pacific side of the canal and the oldest known sirenian from Central America. The new genus has been given the name Culebratherium alemani ("Aleman's Culebra beast"), with the genus name originating from the Culebra Formation, the formation where the remains of the new genus was discovered, and the Greek word "therium," meaning "beast," and the species name coming from Alberto Aleman Zubieta, the former chief executive officer of the Autoridad del Canal de Panamá who supported the excavation. The paper describing this new genus suggests that it used its thick neck muscles, tusks, and downward-pointing snout to dig pits in the ocean floor in order to reach the most nutritious underground seagrass stems, suggesting that seagrass was present in the region 20 million years ago. At about 15 feet long, the individual described in the paper is a juvenile and was still growing. The paper suggests that the large multi-species sirenian communities at the time enabled seagrass beds to be much healthier, as the sirenians consumed the larger seagrass species and allowed smaller species to grow more easily. Here is an image of the skull used to describe the new genus and a diagram of the known material, as well as a link to the paper describing it.




Paper (abstract only): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2018.1511799