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A single capybara tooth found in coastal northern Chile adds to evidence that parts of the Atacama supported a much wetter ecosystem nearly 9 million years ago. It challenges the simple claim that the region has been continuously dry for roughly 40 million years—but it does not show that the entire modern desert was once lush or establish exactly when hyperaridity began.
What was found, and where?
The fossil is a tooth recovered at El Morro, in Chile’s Bahía Inglesa Formation. The University of Arizona account describes the specimen as about two-thirds of an inch long and places it in a bed about three feet thick. The tooth-bearing sediments were deposited in a shallow marine environment between 10 and 7 million years ago; the university account attributes an age of almost 9 million years to the capybara itself. Those are related but distinct age descriptions.
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The account identifies the animal as a capybara, with an extinct genus called Cardiatherium shown as a direct relative of modern capybaras in its reconstruction. At the time of the report, no older capybara remains had been found in Chile. Local fossil collectors, including merchants who donated finds to scientists, helped make the region’s fossil record accessible.
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Why is a capybara tooth surprising in the Atacama?
Modern capybaras are semiaquatic herbivores associated with persistent water and riparian vegetation. They thrive today in low-elevation wetlands east of the Andes, in a range that roughly outlines the Amazon basin. There are no capybaras living in Chile today.
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The Atacama, by contrast, is now among the driest regions on Earth. Study lead author Priscilla Martinez, a doctoral student in the University of Arizona’s Department of Geosciences, called the find “just freakish”: “Finding a capybara tooth in a marine deposit in what today is one of the driest regions on Earth is just freakish.”
What evidence points to wetter conditions?
The tooth is an important clue, but the environmental interpretation draws on other fossils from the same deposits. Researchers also found freshwater fish and gavials—freshwater crocodiles—as well as phytoliths, microscopic silica structures formed in plants. Specialists interpreted the phytoliths as evidence of palms and other flowering plants, including dicots.
Co-author Mark Clementz said, “We have multiple lines of evidence indicative of really wet conditions that are typically associated with capybara today.” Taken together, the animals and plant traces support the interpretation of a local ecosystem with enough persistent water and vegetation to sustain capybaras over time. Clementz said, “All this supports the idea that there was enough of an ecological community to support capybara populations long term.”
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Martinez offered “Think sunny Southern California full of palm trees” as an image of the landscape, while cautioning that researchers could not tell whether palms were blooming extensively. This is a reconstruction of the fossil-bearing setting, not evidence that the whole area now called the Atacama was uniformly covered in wetland or forest.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How might capybaras have reached northern Chile?
The Andes were already a major geographic barrier, with elevations described in the University of Arizona account as reaching up to 18,000 feet, alongside very arid plateau lands. The researchers’ proposed explanation is that capybaras did not cross the high mountains. Instead, they may have spread south along low-elevation coastal wetlands from Venezuela through Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru into northern Chile.
That coastal-corridor explanation is a proposed scenario, not a migration route directly demonstrated by the tooth or a continuous trail of fossils described in the account.
What does the find change about Atacama climate history?
The discovery calls into question a familiar textbook account that the Atacama has remained continuously dry for roughly 40 million years. A water-dependent animal in late Miocene coastal sediments, alongside freshwater animals and plant evidence, supports a wetter local setting at that time.
It does not, by itself, date the onset of the modern hyperarid climate or show how much of the present-day desert was affected. The evidence is best read as a reason to revisit a simple uninterrupted-dryness narrative, not as a complete climate history. Martinez has argued that understanding natural climate shifts in deserts can help establish a baseline for considering their long-term responses to climate change.
Source: University of Arizona News, Daniel Stolte, September 16, 2026. The account says the paper was in press at Scientific Reports; details beyond the account’s reported findings are not included here.
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