Urumaco is a town in

Falcón State Falcón State (, ) is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital is Coro. The state was named after Juan Crisóstomo Falcón. History Early history Present day Falcón State was first explored in 1499 by Juan de la Cosa and Amé ...

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

. It is of interest to paleontologists due to its rich fossil history. The

arid climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk'') is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

of the region means that the fossils are not hidden by vegetation. The fossils were first made known to science by geologists who came across them while looking for oil, which is abundant in some parts of Venezuela. The paleontological wealth of Urumaco makes it the most fossil-rich zone of northern

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. '' Stupendemys geographicus'', the largest turtle ever to have existed, was found here in the 1970s by researchers from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. More recently, publicity has been attracted by discoveries of the giant rodent ''

Phoberomys pattersoni ''Phoberomys pattersoni'' is an extinct rodent that lived in the ancient Orinoco River delta around 8 million years ago. It was the second-largest of the roughly seven species of its genus. Like many other rodents, ''Phoberomys'' was a herbivore ...

'' from the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

epoch. Since 2000 there has been a museum in the town, the ''Museo Paleontológico de Urumaco''.Website of Museum
There is an Archaeology and Paleontology Park in La Cruz de Taratara, a small town in

Sucre Sucre (; ) is the ''de jure'' capital city of Bolivia, the capital of the Chuquisaca Department and the sixth most populous city in Bolivia. Located in the south-central part of the country, Sucre lies at an elevation of . This relatively high ...

near Coro.

References

Populated places in Falcón Miocene paleontological sites Archaeological sites in Venezuela Geology of Venezuela Paleontology in Venezuela Cenozoic paleontological sites of South America {{SouthAm-archaeology-stub

See also

References