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The oldest known lizard has reclaimed its crown clade. A contentious fossil has been re-analyzed by paleobiologists and declared the earliest known member of the lizard-snake group.meaning 'hidden lizard, small butcher'. The second half refers to its size and diet, while the first is a reference to the fossil spending almost 70 years in a storage room before being scientifically described..
While the move was controversial, the researchers believed they'd done their due diligence in their physiological analysis of the species., the team has taken a closer look at the fossil, setting out to address the critics' concerns. X-rays, CT scans, and phylogenetic analysis provide extra evidence to support the original conclusion:says Benton
."In our new paper, we provide great detail of every criticism made and we provide more photographs of the specimen and 3D images from the scans, so everyone can check the detail."They start by going through the major errors the rival team made in observations of the fossil. Certain features in the limbs and skull, which suggest a squamate, were apparently missed by Brownstein., and the Bristol team highlights them with new images.
"We ran the analysis time after time, and it gave our original result, that the little Bristol reptile is indeed the world's oldest modern-type lizard," Either way, this humble reptile had no idea what debate it might spark 200 million years later, as it scurried under the feet of the early dinosaurs.
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