Breugnathair elgolensis — a species of hook-toothed lizard that lived throughout the Center Jurassic, about 167 million years in the past — shows a mosaic of anatomical traits that isn’t current in dwelling teams, with head and physique proportions just like monitor lizards and snake-like options of the tooth and jaws, alongside primitive traits shared with early-diverging teams reminiscent of geckos.
Life reconstruction of Breugnathair elgolensis. Picture credit score: Brennan Stokkermans / Nationwide Museums Scotland.
Breugnathair elgolensis is among the oldest comparatively full fossil lizards but found.
The traditional reptile had snake-like jaws and hook-like, curved tooth just like these of modern-day pythons, paired with the quick physique and fully-formed limbs of a lizard.
Practically 41 cm (16 inches) lengthy from head to tail, it was one of many largest lizards in its ecosystem, the place it probably preyed on smaller lizards, early mammals, and different vertebrates, like younger dinosaurs.
“Snakes are outstanding animals that developed lengthy, limbless our bodies from lizard-like ancestors,” mentioned Dr. Roger Benson, Macaulay curator within the Division of Paleontology on the American Museum of Pure Historical past.
“Breugnathair elgolensis has snake-like options of the tooth and jaws, however in different methods, it’s surprisingly primitive.”
“This may be telling us that snake ancestors had been very totally different to what we anticipated, or it may as an alternative be proof that snake-like predatory habits developed individually in a primitive, extinct group.”
In keeping with the paleontologists, Breugnathair elgolensis belongs to a brand new household of squamates (lizards and snakes), named Parviraptoridae, an enigmatic group with potential significance for snake origins, that was beforehand recognized from very incomplete stays.
“Earlier research reported snake-like tooth-bearing bones that had been present in shut proximity with bones that had gecko-like options,” they mentioned.
“However as a result of these appeared so drastically totally different, some researchers believed they belonged to 2 totally different animals.”
“Our work on Breugnathair elgolensis rejects these earlier findings, displaying that each snake-like and gecko-like options exist collectively in a single animal.”
The fossilized stays of Breugnathair elgolensis had been found in 2016 by Stig Walsh from the Nationwide Museums Scotland on the Isle of Skye.
“The Jurassic fossil deposits on the Isle of Skye are of world significance for our understanding of the early evolution of many dwelling teams, together with lizards, which had been starting their diversification at round this time,” mentioned Dr. Susan Evans, a paleontologist at College School London.
“I first described parviraptorids some 30 years in the past primarily based on extra fragmentary materials, so it’s a bit like discovering the highest of the jigsaw field a few years after you puzzled out the unique image from a handful of items.”
“The mosaic of primitive and specialised options we discover in parviraptorids, as demonstrated by this new specimen, is a crucial reminder that evolutionary paths will be unpredictable.”
A paper in regards to the discovery of Breugnathair elgolensis was printed right now within the journal Nature.
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R.B.J. Benson et al. Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate. Nature, printed on-line October 1, 2025; doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09566-y
