Our planet is filled with wonders that we still have no idea about. Recently, American biologists, together with their Mexican colleagues, discovered a thicket of red swamp mangroves deep in the Yucatan Peninsula. It is a distant relative of the modern species Rhizophora mangle, and it has spent the last 125,000 years in a kind of geographic trap, becoming a historical victim of the last ice age.
Typically, mangroves grow near salt water, on the coast, as they draw nutrients from the sea. If the soil is rich in calcium, they can also live near freshwater reservoirs, and the area around the San Pedro River is just that. The problem is that the grove you’re looking for is at least 170 km from the modern sea, which raises the question of how it got here in the first place. And we are not talking about a stunted grove, but about a powerful and stable ecosystem that looks thriving.