The Atacama Desert, possibly the oldest desert on Earth, takes up the northern third of Chile. It's bounded by the Chilean Coast Range to the west, which blocks rain from the Pacific Ocean, and the enormous Andes to the east, which obstruct rain from the Atlantic Ocean. The driest part of the desert's hyperarid region gets less than 0.08 inches (2 mm) of rainfall a month.
Capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) — the world's largest rodent — exclusively live close to stable freshwater sources and feed on plants that also require water to grow, so the discovery of an extinct capybara relative (Hydrochoerus Cardiatherium) tooth in the Atacama Desert is very strange.
Capybaras are native to South America, although today, they are not found in Chile, where the tooth was unearthed, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Part of the Atacama Desert called Valle de La Luna, named because of the region's resemblance to the moon. (Image credit: Piero Damiani via Getty Images)These findings and others are part of a growing body of evidence that the Atacama Desert was once wet enough for crocodiles and freshwater fish to thrive and palms to grow. The new study, published Sept. 5 in the journal Scientific Reports, shows that capybara relatives lived there as well during the late Miocene, which, because they are semiaquatic animals, is further evidence to support the hypothesis of a sporadically moist Atacama.
Related storiesThe researchers aren't sure how exactly capybaras moved into the Atacama Desert. Although there were capybaras in South America at the time, the Andes created an 18,000-foot-high (5,500 meters) barrier between their current habitats and the site where the tooth was found. The researchers theorized that, instead of traversing the mountains, the ancient capybaras migrated along the western coast of South America, following wetlands, rivers and other water sources.
"If you wanted to find a way that this capybara could be here while the Atacama was still as dry as it is today, you'd have a hard row to hoe," she told Live Science in an email, because the size of the tooth makes it hard to transport it long distances. The desert wind couldn't have blown it such a long way, and while large carcasses can float down waterways for miles, "if you're going to invoke a large enough waterway to do this, you've demonstrated that the Atacama wasn't as dry as it is today anyway."
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