During the Late Cretaceous–early Paleogene, the shallow waters of the Trans-Saharan Seaway waters were teeming with aquatic species which ranged from small mollusks to giant sea snakes and catfish. © Carl Buell
The American Museum of Natural History has an article about how the Sahara Dessert looked before it became a dessert. The area was underwater 50-100 million years ago. Fossil evidence shows that there were giant species of catfish, sea snakes, and fishes called the area home. The details are in a paper published in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.
The Sahara Desert is the world’s largest hot desert, but 50 to 100 million years ago it was under water—and home to giant species of catfish, sea snakes, and fishes.
A new study from Museum Research Associate Maureen O’Leary, professor of Anatomical Sciences at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, and colleagues from the U.S., Australia, and Mali that was published in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History last week incorporates findings from 20 years of field research in the Sahara Desert to provide the first reconstructions of some of these extinct species.
The geological and fossil record of West Africa shows that the region was once crossed by a saltwater body, at a time when sea levels were high in the aftermath of the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana during the late Mesozoic Era. In fact, 40 percent of current land was under water—including areas that are now arid deserts.
