More than 20 million years ago, a short struggle took place in what is now known as the Dominican Republic, in which one animal had its leg bitten off by a predator just before it escaped. Unfortunately the animal fell into a gooey resin deposit, to be fossilized and entombed forever in amber.
The fossil record of that event has revealed something not known before n that salamanders once lived in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Sea. Interestingly, today, there are no salamanders found in the entire Caribbean area.
The now extinct species of salamander, named Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae has been published in the journal Palaeodiversity, by researchers from Oregon State University and the University of California at Berkeley.
According to George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus in the OSU College of Science, and a world expert in the study of insects, plants and other life forms preserved in amber, said that no one has ever found a salamander preserved in amber and never in the Dominican Republic as no salamanders had ever been found living there.
The specimen came from an amber mine in the northern mountain range of the Dominican Republic, between Puerto Plata and Santiago and shows that salamanders did exist in the Caribbean but it is not known when or why they became extinct.
This fossil is 20-30 million years old, and its lineage may go back 40-60 million years ago when the Proto-Greater Antilles, that now include islands such as Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, were still joined to North and South America. Salamanders may have simply stayed on the islands as they began their tectonic drift across the Caribbean Sea. They also may have crossed a land bridge during periods of low sea level, or it’s possible a few specimens could have floated in on debris, riding a log across the ocean.
http://www.kval.com/outdoors/First-fossil-ever-of-a-Salamander-found-in-amber-Caribbean-extinct-now-322073191.html
http://www.kmtr.com/news/local/Discovery-of-salamander-in-amber-sheds-light-on-evolution-322071181.html
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-discovery-salamander-amber-evolution-caribbean.html