This photograph shows two blocks containing the holotype of Microteras borealis. It consists of a portion of the snout (left) and the braincase (right). Resized Image using AI by SFLORG Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History |
Yale researchers have identified the oldest-known, definitive members of the lizard crown group that includes all living lizards and their closest extinct relatives.
The two new species, Eoscincus ornatus and Microteras borealis, fill important gaps in the fossil record and offer tantalizing clues about the complexity and geographic distribution of lizard evolution. The new lizard “kings” are described in a study published in Nature Communications.
“This helps us time out the ages of the major living lizard and snake groups, as well as when their key anatomical features originated,” said Chase Brownstein, first author of the study. Brownstein, a Yale senior, collaborated on the study with Yale paleontologists Jacques Gauthier and Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar.
Gauthier is a professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Science and curator at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Bhullar is an associate professor of Earth & planetary sciences and an associate curator at the Peabody Museum.