Scientists discover an extinct reptile that lived with dinosaurs 150 million years ago
The rocks of the Morrison Formation in the American West contain many dinosaurs dating back 150 million years, such as the herbivorous Stegosaurus and the meat-eating Allosaurus dinosaurs.
This made the focus of researchers in that region focused on dinosaurs, regardless of what rocks consisting of other small creatures that lived side by side with these famous and famous giants could bear.
According to the “For Science” website, Matthew Carano, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the lead author of the study, says: Scientists are interested in collecting the treasures of the Morrison Formation of the largest and most dramatic dinosaurs, and they overlook the diversity of the small reptiles that are there, perhaps because we do not We get only small, incomplete and poorly preserved fragments.
Carano adds: In 2010, "Peter Kroehler" - one of the specialists in preparing samples for the study - noticed the presence of two small bones inside a rock lying next to a dinosaur's nest, and "Kroehler" believed that there were more bones inside it, and put signs next to the small bones to be transferred and preserved inside the museum. Hoping to find out what secrets it holds.
According to the press release, a copy of which was seen by “For information”, “Joseph Gregor came to the museum after that volunteering to clean that sample and remove the rocks around it, and Gregor spent months preparing the sample, using sharp tools with metal heads, and as soon as the bones appeared, even Scientists examined it under a microscope, and the sample was scanned in a computerized tomography scanner. Through the scanning, the team obtained highly detailed images of the bones in three dimensions, which allowed them to perform an almost complete reconstruction of the skull, and after revealing the skeleton, it was a moment of astonishment for everyone; The team did not find a complete skeleton of a reptile of that period like this specimen, which made it extremely rare.”
And the researchers thought that the fossil was due to a reptile that had been discovered before, especially since the work in that region is very old, more than a century and a half ago, but what the accurate computerized tomography showed was the most amazing and most important; It seemed to the researchers that the structure might belong to a completely new, previously unknown species.
The researchers concluded in the study, which was published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, that this structure was due to a type of beak-headed reptile, and that it lived in the badlands of the Wyoming region.
Rhynchocephalians are also of great importance. As they are cousins \u200b\u200bof snakes and lizards, and despite their large numbers, diversity of shapes and feeding habits for millions of years, there is only one species left that lives in New Zealand now and is called tuatara.
The researchers named the new species "Opisthiamimus gregori", after volunteer researcher Joseph Gregor, who spent hundreds of hours meticulously scraping the bones. The length of the new reptile - from nose to tail - is about 16 cm, and the shape of its teeth indicates that it He was feeding on insects. "The fossil has been added to the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, so that it remains available for future study," Carano says. Its skin was built from beak-headed reptiles versus lizards, so far spread all over the world.
Source: websites