A new study revealed that 34 million years ago Iguanas sailed about 8,000 kilometers from North America to the Fiji islands clutched to floating vegetation. It is the longest known transoceanic journey of a terrestrial species.
About 34 million years ago, the iguanas made the longest transoceanic trip known to a terrestrial species, sailing One fifth back to the world in raft.
Clinging to floating vegetation, the iguanas traveled from the North America until they are established in Fiji Islands. This is what a study reveals this Monday at PNAS.
Researchers believe that the Iguanas made the trip of More than 8,000 kilometers in rafts made of vegetationarriving at Fiji shortly after the formation of the islands.
“We can imagine a kind of cyclone to overthrow trees where there was a group of iguanas and perhaps their eggs, which caught the ocean chains and made the crossing in rafts“Said the study leader Simon Scarpettafrom the University of San Francisco, quoted by.
As the same magazine refers, the brilliant green lizards of the Fiji Islands are the only iguanas outside the western hemisphere, and the way they arrived there has been a longtime mystery. Now the researchers have also found that the Iguanas of the Fiji Islands have a much closer kinship than they were thought with their cousins in the Western hemisphere.
It was from this finding that the thesis that the Iguanas made that trip came directly from the west coast of the United States for the Fiji Islandsabout 34 million years ago.
Other theories (weaker)
Previously, some biologists had suggested that the lizards of the Fiji – of the genre Brachylophus – They descended from a family of Iguanas, now extinct, who once populated the Pacific.
Others suggested that the lizards could have traveled shorter distances From South America, passing the Antarcticide or Australia, before they eventually reached the Pacific.
However, as Live Science points out, these ideas were based on genetic analyzes that did not conclusively demonstrate the kinship of Fiji’s iguanas with other iguanides. On the contrary, the new analysis is based on an DNA sequence of all the genome collected from more than 200 specimens of museum iguanas around the world.
The new study revealed that the genre Brachylophus of the Fiji Islands is more narrowly related to gender lizards Diposaurswhich are spread throughout the deserts North America.
“The iguanas and iguanas of the desert, in particular, are resistant to hunger and dehydration, so my thought process is that if there had to be a group of vertebrates or a group of lizards that could actually make a trip of 8,000 kilometers through the Pacific in a mass of vegetation, it would be an iguana ancestor of the desert,” said Simon Scarpetta.
