Staff at the University of Bristol have carried out a cross-sectional scan of the fossilized remains of a reptile that had been lying in a storage cupboard at the Natural History Museum for decades. According to them, the unknown reptile is closely associated with today with lizards.
According to David Whiteside, head of the research, the fossil is one of the most important discoveries of the past decades. Until now, lizards were thought to have originated in the late middle Jurassic period, but new findings show that they lived in the late Triassic period (201-237 million years ago).
fossil affects reptilesover all estimates of the origin of lizards and snakes, and influences assumptions about their rate of evolution, reports the BBC.
X-rays led to the discovery
The rocks were found in the storage of a 1950s collection of specimens from a quarry near Tortworth in South Gloucestershire.
The research team named their discovery Cryptovaranoides microlanius, which means little butcher, in reference to the animal’s jaws full of sharp, cutting teeth.
The specimen was discovered in a locker full of Clevosaurus fossils. At first they thought it might be a relative of the New Zealand tuatara, the sole survivor of the group Rhynchoceexpress (crested lizards) that split from the quaternary group more than 240 million years ago.
As they continued to examine the specimen, they became increasingly convinced that it was in fact more closely related to modern lizards than the tuatara group. The university team took X-rays of the fossil so they could reconstruct it in three dimensions and see the tiny bones hidden in the rock. They said Cryptovaranoides was clearly a scaly (a class of scaly reptiles) because it differed from Rhynchocephalians in several key areas, including the skull, cervical vertebrae, and shoulders.
