Atlantis of the iguanas found in Pacific

摘要

Call it Darwin's version of sunken treasure. A team of German scientists has discovered ancient predecessors of the Galapagos Islands now resting more than 1,000 meters below the ocean surface off the west coast of Costa Rica. The drowned islands may help biologists explain the biological riches of the modern Galapagos, where the father of evolutionary theory gained his most important insights. The find "shows that the Galapagos archipelago existed in its present [form] since at least 14.5 million year ago. That is important for evolutionary studies," says Reinhard Werner of Geomar in Kiel, Germany, whose team reported the discovery this month in Geology.