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Evolution secrets of reptiles have been revealed by a 240-million-year-old snake ancestor uncovered in Scotland.
Paleontologists from across Europe uncovered a near-complete skeleton of an early reptile from the middle Jurassic period in the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Findings and analysis of the fossil have been published in the journal Nature.
Paleontologists believe that the skeleton may help them understand "anatomical transformations" that played a role in the evolution of reptiles that are alive today.
The skeleton discovered is a type of Bellairsia gracilis, also known as a squamate.
It is the ancestor of over 10,000 living species, and it lived 240 million years ago. This particular fossil was from the middle Jurassic period, about 167 million years ago.
"[Discovering the fossil] was preceded by huge curiosity. We have so many questions about the past. When I got the opportunity to work with such an exceptional fossil, I felt very privileged. The second best moment was when we realized that we found information in this skeleton that explains one of these questions that we were having for so long," corresponding author Mateusz Tałanda at the University of Warsaw, who was involved in the discovery, told Newsweek.
"Until now we knew very little about the predecessors of modern groups of lizards and snakes. Most Mesozoic lizards were compared to modern groups because of that. Bellairsia is changing our perspective and is helping us recognize extinct groups of lizards that we were unaware of. I expect that many Mesozoic lizards of uncertain phylogenetic position will turn out to belong to some ancient groups."
After the discovery, the study authors analyzed the skeleton with a high-resolution X-ray.
They found that the specimen had both ancestral traits, which were shared through a common ancestor, and derived traits, which originated through evolutionary divergence.
"After so many years of research, we finally recognized the last stage of lizard evolution just before the origin of modern groups. Lizards and snakes are highly diversified today and differ from all other reptiles by a large number of specializations," Tałanda said. "Now we can say which ones were acquired last and enabled the expansion of lizards into various ecosystems around the world."
So far, the middle Jurassic period has yielded mostly incomplete lizard skeletons, Arnau Bolet, a pathologist at the University of Barcelona who published a News and Views article on the findings, told Newsweek.
"This new specimen shows that some middle Jurassic localities have the potential to yield articulated and almost complete specimens that will help in getting more robust hypotheses regarding their place in the tree of life," Bolet said.
"For example, the first complete specimen of Bellairsia described by Talanda and colleagues has allowed for the first time an assessment of the phylogenetic position of the genus, that has been reinterpreted as some sort of primitive squamate, instead of a form more closely related to modern lizards as it had been initially interpreted.
"Moreover, the fact that this is a stem squamate in deposits much older (more than 60 million years older) than the other few examples of stem squamates known until now makes Bellairsia a more reliable source of information about the primitive morphology of squamates."
About the writer
Robyn White is a Newsweek Nature Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on wildlife, science and the ... Read more