Scientists found a 9-million-year-old capybara relative's tooth in Chile's Atacama Desert, one of Earth's driest places; the water-loving animal adds evidence that the region once supported wetlands and a much wetter climate

• The newly discovered tooth provides another reason to reconsider how the region looked in the distant past, the report claims.
• The Atacama Desert is a landscape where water is measured in millimetres, not rivers.
• Today, parts of this vast Chilean desert receive almost no rain, making the discovery of an animal that depended on plentiful freshwater all the more surprising.