Fossil of extinct reptile that lived among the dinosaurs found in Wyoming, experts say
The fossil of an extinct reptile that lived among the dinosaurs 150 million years ago was found in Wyoming, experts said.
A team of scientists found the near complete fossil, aside from the tail and parts of the hind legs, in the state’s Morrison Formation, according to a news release from the Smithsonian Institution.
“Even though it looks like a relatively simple lizard, it embodies an entire evolutionary epic going back more than 200 million years,” Matthew Carrano, the National Museum of Natural History’s curator of Dinosauria, said in the news release.
The new species, Opisthiamimus gregori, is named after museum volunteer Joseph Gregor “who spent hundreds of hours meticulously scraping and chiseling the bones from a block of stone that first caught museum fossil preparator Pete Kroehler’s eye back in 2010,” according to the institution.
The reptile, which likely lived off of insects and other invertebrates, would have been about 6 inches long from nose to tail “and would fit curled up in the palm of an adult human hand,” according to the institution.
The reptile is from the same “lineage as New Zealand’s living tuatara,” the institution said, and had some odd features, including “teeth fused to the jaw bone, a unique chewing motion that slides the lower jaw back and forth like a saw blade, a 100-year-plus lifespan and a tolerance for colder climates.”
Though they are lizard-lize, looking like a “particularly stout iguana,” the species is not a lizard, the institution said. Instead, they are rhynchocephalians.
Despite being found “nearly worldwide” at one time, for unknown reasons, the reptile disappeared as lizards and snakes grew in dominance, the institution said.
“These animals may have disappeared partly because of competition from lizards but perhaps also due to global shifts in climate and changing habitats,” Carrano said.
To know exactly what happened to the species, more evidence is needed, according to Carrano, a story that fossils can help piece together.
This story was originally published September 21, 2022 at 12:47 PM with the headline "Fossil of extinct reptile that lived among the dinosaurs found in Wyoming, experts say."
