A lizard found in storeroom pushes origin of reptiles

NEW DELHI: 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 Tortworth in Gloucestershire, England. The technology didn’t exist then to expose its contemporary features. As a modern-type lizard, the new fossil impacts all estimates of the origin of lizards and snakes, together called the Squamata, and affects assumptions about their rates of evolution, and even the key trigger for the origin of the group.

The team, led by David Whiteside of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, have named their incredible discovery Cryptovaranoides microlanius meaning ‘small butcher’ in tribute to its jaws that were filled with sharp-edged slicing teeth.