#Squamates;Lizards;Jurassic;Triassic

[reportwire]

Fossil discovery in storeroom cupboard shifts origin of modern lizard back 35 million years

Fossil discovery in storeroom cupboard shifts origin of modern lizard back 35 million years

Newswise — A specimen retrieved from a cupboard of the Natural History Museum in London has shown that modern lizards originated in the Late Triassic and not the Middle Jurassic as previously thought. This fossilised relative of living lizards such as monitor lizards, gila monsters and slow worms was identified in a stored museum collection from the 1950s, including specimens from a quarry near…

View On WordPress

#All Journal News #Embargoed Feed - hidden #Evolution and Darwin #Newswise #Paleontology #Squamates;Lizards;Jurassic;Triassic #University of Bristol

[i-draws-dinosaurs]

So watching PP yesterday was the first time I learned that mosasaurs were squamates (possibly literally lizards? I wasn't clear). Is that also true of other marine reptiles like plesiosaurs as well? I somehow always thought they were an entirely separate order of Reptilia.

Yep, being squamates means that mosasaurs are literally lizards! There's a bit of disagreement about where they sit in the lizard family tree but they're usually placed around the varanid/snake area, some researchers have explicitly classified them as varanids but that's questionable.

On the other hand, other marine reptiles are from much older lineages unrelated to lizards that are now totally extinct. Plesiosaurs and pliosaurs come from an ancient group of reptiles called Sauropterygians ("reptile flippers") that evolved in the early Triassic, and also includes weird Triassic groups such as nothosaurs and placodonts!

All the major sauropterygian groups! Including Parahenodus (a placodont), Ceresiosaurus (a nothosaur), Aristonectes (a plesiosaur) and Brachauchenius (a pliosaurid plesiosaur). Via Wikimedia Commons.

Ichthyosaurs are in their own weird little group from the early Triassic as well, called ichthyosaurimorphs! One of the earliest representatives of the group is called Cartorhynchus, which probably looks like this:

(Art by Nobu Tamura)

In fact, the only other group of marine reptiles aside from mosasaurs that belong to a group of reptiles that are alive today are crocodiles! From the Early Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, a group of marine crocodylomorphs called Thalattosuchians lived in the oceans all around the globe! They were actually just a well adapted to marine life as mosasaurs were, even evolving tail flukes!

(art by Dmitri Bogdanov)

#paleontology #mosasaurs #plesiosaurs #ichthyosaurs #thalattosuchians #marine reptiles #paleoart #palaeoblr #fossils #prehistoric planet

[covenawhite66]

A specimen retrieved from a cupboard in the Natural History Museum in London has shown that modern lizards originated in the Late Triassic and not the Middle Jurassic as previously thought.

This fossilized relative of living lizards such as monitor lizards, gila monsters. The specimen was simply labeled 'Clevosaurus.

There is only one major primitive feature not found in modern squamates, an opening on one side of the end of the upper arm bone, the humerus, where an artery and nerve pass through

Cryptovaranoides does have some other, apparently primitive characters such as a few rows of teeth on the bones of the roof of the mouth, but experts have observed the same in the living European Glass lizard and many snakes such as Boas and Pythons have multiple rows of large teeth in the same area. Despite this, it is advanced like most living lizards in its braincase and the bone connections in the skull suggest that it was flexible.

#fossil #lizard #discovery #Natural History Museum in London #paleontology

[petnews2day]

Exceptional Jurassic fossil lizard sheds light on early lizard evolution

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/guiG

Exceptional Jurassic fossil lizard sheds light on early lizard evolution

How did lizards and other squamates evolve? With around 11,000 known species, squamates are the most diverse terrestrial vertebrates living today, but their evolution has been shrouded in mystery. Studies of their genetics suggested the group evolved in the Middle Triassic over 240 million years ago, but the earliest definite fossils only date to 170 […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/guiG #ReptileNews

#Reptile News