An international team of paleontologists, which includes the University of Bristol, have identified the world's oldest lizard, providing key insight into the evolution of modern lizards and snakes.

The 240-million-year-old fossil, Megachirella wachtleri, is the most ancient ancestor of all modern lizards and snakes, known as squamates, the new study, published today in the journal Nature, shows.

The fossil, along with data from both living and extinct reptiles -- which involved anatomical data drawn from CT scans and DNA -- suggests the origin of squamates is even older, taking place in the late Permian period, more than 250 million years ago.

Tiago Simões, lead author and PhD student from the University of Alberta in Canada, said: "The specimen is 75 million years older than what we thought were the oldest fossil lizards in the entire world and provides valuable information for understanding the evolution of both living and extinct squamates."

Currently, there are 10,000 species of lizards and snakes around the world -- twice as many different species as mammals. Despite this modern diversity, scientists did not know much about the early stages of their evolution.

Tiago Simões added: "It is extraordinary when you realize you are answering long-standing questions about the origin of one of the largest groups of vertebrates on Earth."

Co-author, Dr Michael Caldwell, also from the University of Alberta, added: "Fossils are our only accurate window into the ancient past. Our new understanding of Megachirella is but a point in ancient time, but it tells us things about the evolution of lizards that we simply cannot learn from any of the 9000 or so species of lizards and snakes alive today."

Originally found in the early 2000s in the Dolomites Mountains of Northern Italy, researchers considered it an enigmatic lizard-like reptile but could not reach conclusive placement, and it remained nearly unnoticed by the international community.

In order to better understand both the anatomy of Megachirella and the earliest evolution of lizards and snakes the authors assembled the largest reptile dataset ever created.

The authors combined it with several new anatomical information from Megachirella obtained from high-resolution CT scans.

All this new information was analysed using state of the art methods to assess relationships across species, revealing that the once enigmatic reptile was actually the oldest known squamate.

Co-author Dr Randall Nydam of the Midwestern University in Arizona, said: "At first I did not think Megachirella was a true lizard, but the empirical evidence uncovered in this study is substantial and can lead to no other conclusion."

Co-author Dr Massimo Bernardi from MUSE -- Science Museum, Italy and University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, added: "This is the story of the re-discovery of a specimen and highlights the importance of preserving naturalistic specimens in well maintained, publicly accessible collections.

"New observations, that could arise from the use of new techniques -- as for the mCT data we have obtained here, could provide a completely new understanding even of long-known specimens."</s>A finger-sized fossilized creature found in the Italian Alps is the earliest lizard ever discovered, a new study suggests, filling a longtime gap in the fossil record and in the reptile family tree.

An analysis of Megachirella wachtleri identifies the tiny creature as the closest thing we know to the ancestor of all lizards and snakes, says Tiago Simoes, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alberta, who led the study published today in the journal Nature.

I immediately thought that it could be this missing link that we were hoping for. - Tiago Simoes, University of Alberta

Megachirella is 75 million years older than any previously known lizard fossils, which suggests lizards evolved significantly earlier than previously thought.

Megachirella would have scampered through a subtropical, coastal forest about 240 million years ago. Somehow, misfortune struck, and it was washed out to sea, buried and fossilized.

The eight-centimetre-long fossil includes the creature's skull and back, but cuts off before its pelvis and tail.

The fossil was discovered more than 15 years ago on Monte Pra della Vacca, in the Dolomites mountain range of northern Italy, by Michael Wachtler, a self-described explorer and "philosopher of nature" who has discovered many other fossils.

Megachirella would have scampered through a subtropical, coastal forest about 240 million years ago in what is now the Dolomites of northern Italy. It was somehow washed out to sea, buried and fossilized. (Davide Bonadonna)

Researchers who studied the reptile fossil soon after its discovery named it after Wachtler. They suspected it was related to lizards, but didn't have enough information to figure out precisely what it was.

Up until now, the oldest lizard fossils found were from about 170 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period. That's 70 million years after the earliest known dinosaurs began roaming the Earth.

But based on genetic evidence and fossils of other reptiles, paleontologists suspected that lizards actually evolved much earlier — there was just a gap in the fossil record.

Simoes first saw the fossil of Megachirella in 2015, while completing his PhD. He was working with University of Alberta biology professor Michael Caldwell to create a detailed family tree of living and extinct reptiles; the project took him to over 50 different museum and university collections in 17 countries to examine specimens.

When Simoes spotted Megachirella, he was struck by how similar it looked to a lizard, even though it was much older than the oldest known lizards.

"I immediately thought that it could be this missing link that we were hoping for," he recalled.

Digital digging

Since the fossil's discovery, a new technology had become available — micro CT scanning — that would allow researchers to X-ray the fossil and view parts of it that were still embedded in the rock, such as its belly.

"It can digitally remove that rock," said Simoes.

With such a small, fragile fossil, physically removing the rock would've been impossible without damaging the fossil.

Tiago Simoes found Megachirella while creating a detailed family tree of living and extinct reptiles. The project took him to over 50 different museum and university collections in 17 countries to examine specimens. (Tiago Simoes)

The CT scan revealed many features — in its skull, its clavicle, its arm and its wrist — that are found only in lizards.

"It's pretty much all over the body," Simoes said.

The fossilized creature also has a lot of features that are found in other reptiles, but no longer exist in modern lizards and snakes, such as extra ribs in its belly region and an extra opening in its upper arm bone.

The new findings confirm that early lizards scampered among the first dinosaurs. In fact, it now appears that like the branch of reptiles that led to dinosaurs, lizards first evolved before the End-Permian extinction, a catastrophe 252 million years ago that wiped out 96 per cent of marine species and 70 per cent of vertebrates on land. Though it seems, of course, that at least some early lizards and dinosaurs survived and went on to diversify into a huge variety of species.

Marc Jones, a researcher who studies small vertebrates such as reptiles at the University of Adelaide and the Natural History Museum in London, says the study looks like a fair assessment of the available evidence, although some scientists might be disappointed about parts missing from the fossil, such as the knee and ankle, that also contain key lizard features.

"Lizards are a highly diverse and ecologically important group today but their early evolution remains mysterious. Any new developments such as this discovery will be significant," Jones added in an email. "It's great to see lizards, rather than dinosaurs or mammals, get some attention for a change."

While the word "dinosaur" means "terrible lizard," Simoes notes that lizards and dinosaurs are not at all closely related. "They're on opposite sides of the reptile tree of life," he said.

Dinosaurs are on the genetic branch that includes birds and crocodiles, while lizards, snakes and tuataras, a lizard-like animal, are on a completely different branch.

In addition to Simoes and Caldwell, the new study on Megachirella included researchers from Poland, Italy, the U.K., Australia and the U.S. It was funded by the Vanier Canada and Izaak Walton Killam Memorial scholarships, the Euregio Science Fund, Midwestern University, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Alberta Ukrainian Centennial scholarship, and the National Science Centre of Poland.</s>Scientists made the surprising discovery of the oldest known lizard fossil deep in the Dolomites in Italy.

With the discovery of a 240-million-year-old Megachirella wachtleri fossil that was found hidden in the Dolomites in Italy, scientists have now recovered what is believed to be the oldest known lizard fossil in existence.

While the lizard fossil can’t technically be counted as a direct relative of the snakes and lizards that you see around you today, once upon a time they all did have one ancestor in common, and this ancestor scuttled over the Earth around 260 million years ago, as ABC reports.

One of the greatest things about the discovery of the Megachirella lizard fossil is that it proves that lizards and snakes survived the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs, and also that lizards came into being long before what has been called the Great Dying, as paleontologist Alessandro Palci explained.

The fossil of the ancient Megachirella lizard was first discovered in 1999, with the lizard remains measuring approximately six centimeters in length. Scientists found that the creature’s ribs, spine, front limbs, and skull were still attached to the skeleton, and over the next 10 years the fossil was closely studied and scrutinized by scientists.

It was the evolutionary biologist Tiago Simoes who decided to look more closely at this tiny reptilian skeleton, and researchers were able to get a much better picture of the fossil by using a 3-D micro-CT scan.

Paleontologist Christy Hipsley has noted that this particular form of 3-D scanning is not only non-invasive but that it has the amazing ability to allow scientists to fully explore areas of fossils that they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to observe.

The new dating of this Megachirella means that lizards evolved more than 75 million years before they were first thought to have existed, according to Dr. Palci. Unfortunately, however, the Megachirella has no relatives alive and roaming the Earth today.

As it turns out, the Megachirella is the ancestor of squamates, which is the class that both snakes and lizards belong in now. Scientists have now determined that when it comes to lizards, geckos are one of the very first of the squamates to have evolved.

You can read more about the discovery of the oldest known lizard fossil known as the Megachirella in the new study that has been published in Nature.</s>Scientists have unearthed the mother of all lizards using the largest reptile dataset ever collected. (Photo : Pixabay)

Meet the mother of lizards, a tiny ancient creature that lived around 240 million years ago and roamed the Earth with early dinosaurs.

By studying the fossil of this ancient "mother," scientists are able to bridge gaps in knowledge on a reptilian group's evolution. Despite the volume of lizards and snakes throughout the planet, little is known about their early days.

A team of international scientists published their findings in the academic journal Nature, which revolved around the chameleon-sized reptile Megachirella wachtleri. Scans of the reptile's fossilized skeleton showed that it's actually the ancestor of a group of reptiles that are dubbed as squamates, which includes all of today's lizards and snakes.

The researchers analyzed the Megachirella fossil as well as data from more than 130 fossilized and living reptiles and then found that the squamates' origins can be traced back even further than initially thought. It turns out these reptiles lived in the Permian period over 250 million years ago.

"The specimen is 75 million years older than what we thought were the oldest fossil lizards in the entire world," lead author Tiago Simoes, who is a PhD student from the University of Alberta, explains in a release from the university. "This discovery provides valuable information for understanding the evolution of both living and extinct squamates."

The realization of the oldest known squamate opens up a new world in the history of modern species.

"It's almost a virtual Rosetta stone," coauthor Michael Caldwell, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta, says in a video for the MUSE Science Museum in Italy. "In terms of the information that it gives us on the evolution of snakes and lizards. 10,000 modern species of these animals alive today, but yet we've really had no real understanding of where they came from in terms of their evolutionary history."

The discovery was only possible with a comprehensive collection of data that's painstakingly assembled over the years, which is described by the university as the "largest reptile dataset ever created."

Modern technology also allowed for micro CT scans and a reconstruction of the Megachirella fossil.

"This is the story of the re-discovery of a specimen that highlights the importance of preserving naturalistic specimens in well-maintained, publicly accessible collections," adds Massimo Bernardi, another coauthor who is associated with MUSE and University of Bristol. He points out that brand-new techniques could yield a fresh perspective on even the most familiar specimens in the planet.</s>LONDON: Scientists have identified the world's oldest lizard - the most most ancient ancestor of all modern lizards and snakes - by analysing a 240-million-year-old fossil.

The study, published in the journal Nature, provides key insight into the evolution of modern lizards and snakes.

The 240-million-year-old fossil, Megachirella wachtleri, is the most ancient ancestor of all modern lizards and snakes, known as squamates, according to researchers including those from the University of Bristol in the UK.

The fossil, along with data from both living and extinct reptiles - which involved anatomical data drawn from CT scans and DNA - suggests the origin of squamates is even older, taking place in the late Permian period, more than 250 million years ago.

"The specimen is 75 million years older than what we thought were the oldest fossil lizards in the entire world and provides valuable information for understanding the evolution of both living and extinct squamates," said Tiago Simoes, PhD student from the University of Alberta in Canada.

Currently, there are 10,000 species of lizards and snakes around the world -- twice as many different species as mammals.

Despite this modern diversity, scientists did not know much about the early stages of their evolution.

"It is extraordinary when you realise you are answering long-standing questions about the origin of one of the largest groups of vertebrates on Earth," said Simoes.

"Fossils are our only accurate window into the ancient past.

Our new understanding of Megachirella is but a point in ancient time, but it tells us things about the evolution of lizards that we simply cannot learn from any of the 9000 or so species of lizards and snakes alive today," said Michael Caldwell, also from the University of Alberta.

Originally found in the early 2000s in the Dolomites Mountains of Northern Italy, researchers considered it an enigmatic lizard-like reptile but could not reach conclusive placement, and it ramained nearly unnoticed by the international community.

In order to better understand both the anatomy of Megachirella and the earliest evolution of lizards and snakes researchers assembled the largest reptile dataset ever created.

They combined it with several new anatomical information from Megachirella obtained from high-resolution CT scans.

The data was analysed using state of the art methods to assess relationships across species, revealing that the once enigmatic reptile was actually the oldest known squamate.

"At first I did not think Megachirella was a true lizard, but the empirical evidence uncovered in this study is substantial and can lead to no other conclusion," said Randall Nydam of the Midwestern University in the US.</s>Scientists say they have discovered world's oldest lizard fossil, revealing new information about the evolution of the reptiles — they might have lived among the first dinosaurs.

The fossil of a lizard-like creature known as the Megachirella wachtleri was found in northern Italy's Dolomites mountain range in the early 2000s. Recently, researchers determined the fossil was 240 million years old. That is 75 million years older than the previously known oldest squamate — the family of lizards, snakes and worm lizards — fossils, according to the analysis published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"Our new understanding of Megachirella is but a point in ancient time, but it tells us things about the evolution of lizards that we simply cannot learn from any of the 9,000 or so species of lizards and snakes alive today," co-author Michael Caldwell from the University of Alberta said in a statement.

Scientists used a new X-ray technology to examine parts of the fossil embedded within the rock to determine the species was in fact part of the lizard family based on head, shoulder and wrist features.

Since this discovery, scientists didn't know much about the early stages of lizard and snake evolution, even though there are twice as many different species of them as mammals, the University of Bristol notes. Lizard fossils are hard to come by, considering the fragile nature of their skeletons.

Now, researchers are rewriting their family tree placing lizards before the Permian period, the great mass extinction.

More: Man who fled Pompeii was crushed by large rock. His headless remains were just discovered

Lead author Tiago Simões, a PhD student from the University of Alberta in Canada, said the specimen "provides valuable information for understanding the evolution of both living and extinct squamates."</s>University of Alberta scientists have discovered a fossil belonging to a lizard that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, but is related to modern lizards and snakes.

Paleontologists said in a study, the 240-million-year-old fossil for the Megachirella wachtleri is the most ancient ancestor of modern lizards and snakes, known as squamates.

Scientists analyzed the fossil and data from living and extinct reptiles and suggest the origin of squamates may date back earlier than first thought – dating to the Permian period.

“The specimen is 75 million years older than what we thought were the oldest fossil lizards in the entire world,” Tiago Simões, lead author and PhD candidate, said in a statement. “This discovery provides valuable information for understanding the evolution of both living and extinct squamates.”

These days, there are about 10,000 species of lizards and snakes in the world, twice as many as mammals. However, officials said scientists don’t know much about the start of their evolution.

“It is extraordinary when you realize you are answering long-standing questions about the origin of one of the largest groups of vertebrates on Earth,” Simões said.

The fossil that led to this discovery was originally found 20 years ago in the Dolomites Mountains in northern Italy – and researchers didn’t at first realize its significance.

“At first I did not think Megachirella was a true lizard, but the empirical evidence uncovered in this study is substantial and can lead to no other conclusion,” co-author Randall Nydam of Midwestern University said in a statement.

Researchers from the U of A, Australia, Italy and the United States worked on the analysis leading up to this discovery.</s>Scientists may now have a better understanding of what the world's first lizards looked like.

A newly studied fossil specimen is being hailed by researchers as the “mother of all lizards” because it's thought to be an early species from which all of today's squamates—lizards and snakes—eventually evolved. Dubbed Megachirella wachtleri, the fossil creature dates back 240 million years, according to a study describing it this week in the journal Nature.

Where was the lizard fossil found?

The Magechirella fossil was found in the Italian Alps 20 years ago. At the time, scientists thought it might be related to squamates, but they didn't have enough evidence to formally describe it as a direct ancestor. Megachirella's detailed features weren't completely discernible, and scientists didn't have a comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary timeline for squamates.

As part of the more recent reanalysis, scientists took the fossil specimen to a research facility in northern Italy where it underwent micro-CT scans. The resulting images showed the animal in greater detail, even allowing scientists to see within the rock the fossil is still nestled within. They scans revealed unique features that finally identified Megachirella as an ancient squamate.

How did scientists find its place in the lizard family tree?

Lead study author Tiago Simões spent more than four years piecing together the squamate lineage. Together with his advisor Michael Caldwell, a University of Alberta paleontologist, he assembled what the team says is the largest reptile dataset ever compiled. It contains phylogenetic data from 130 living and extinct lizard and snake species.

"I spent nearly 400 days visiting over 50 museums and university collections across 17 countries to collect data on fossil and living species of reptiles, to understand the early evolution of reptiles and lizards," Simões told the AFP.

Then, using data from the micro-CT scans, the team was able to construct a 3-D model of the ancient lizard's physiology. Looking at its features, they inferred that it followed the evolutionary path of early reptiles, but crucially, it arose before the eventual split between lizards and snakes.

Why does this discovery matter?

Squamates are among the most diverse and widespread groups of creatures on the planet, but scientists know surprisingly little about their early evolutionary origins. The new discovery is already helping paleontologists better understand how lizards and snakes survived in prehistoric times and eventually gave rise to the scaly animals we see today.

“The specimen is 75 million years older than what we thought were the oldest fossil lizards in the entire world,” Simões says in a press release. Caldwell adds that for paleontologists, Megachirella is akin to the Rosetta Stone, in the way that the fossil is helping them decode the reptile family tree.</s>It's not often that a fossil shakes up our understanding of an entire group of animals, but a 240-million-year-old fossil that we discovered 15 years ago has done exactly that.

The fossil of a Megachirella wachtleri lizard provides a link in the evolution of Squamata, or scaled reptiles, the largest order of reptiles that encompasses lizards and snakes.

"It's almost a virtual Rosetta stone in terms of the information that it gives us on the evolution of snakes and lizards," Michael Caldwell, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta, said in a video about the find. (The video is embedded above.)

Today, the planet is inhabited by about 10,000 species of lizards and snakes. That's nearly double the number of known mammal species. Despite this, we know precious little about the early stages of their evolution. The latest evidence suggests the order dates back some 250 million years, but the earliest known fossil from the Squamata order is 70 million years younger than that.

"That's more time than there is between us and the dinosaurs, and we had no clue what was going on," Tiago Simões, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta, told The Washington Post.

This is where the Megachirella wachtleri lizard enters the scene.

The fossil was discovered in Northern Italy's Dolomites Mountains back in 2003 by amateur fossil hunters. The fossil was formally described the same year, receiving the name Megachirella wachtleri, named for its sizable hands ("mega" and "cheiros" are ancient Greek words for "large" and "hand," respectively). The researchers also categorized it as belonging to the Lepidosauromorpha clade, a branch of reptiles that includes lizards. Ten years later, another study confirmed the classification using more advanced computer-generated comparisons with other species.

Still, the lizard posed some mysteries, and researchers took the fossil to the Multidisciplinary Laboratory of the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. There, the fossil was subjected to a high-resolution micro CT scan that allowed scientists to see the parts of the lizard that were still encased in rock.

With this scan, along with comparisons to other reptiles, researchers were able to identify features of the lizard that earlier studies simply couldn't due to technical limitations. The micro CT scan allowed scientists to pick out features regarding its brain case, collar bone and wrists, features that are unique to lizards. However, the scan also revealed vestigial traits that more modern members of Squamata have lost, including a small cheek bone and belly bones that were found in many dinosaurs.

The researchers published these findings in Nature.

Between these features and some molecular data the researchers gathered, a few other things became apparent about Megachirella wachtleri. First, the lizard was a squamate, a member of the Squamata group, and this pushes that family tree back by some 75 million years. Scientists now have insights into how these animals evolved over time.

Second, the data indicated that the earliest squamates originated just before before the "Great Dying," a mass extinction event that wiped out 90 percent of marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrates 252 million years ago.

"Squamates, for example, were actually there before the extinction, they went through [it] in some way, and they took the opportunities that opened up just after the extinction," Massimo Bernardi, co-author of the study and a professor at the University of Bristol, told The Guardian.

As for the Megachirella wachtleri itself, researchers have yet to glean any behavioral information from the fossil beyond suspecting that it liked living on beachfront property. This is a guess since the Dolomites at the time the fossilized lizard met its demise were a series of lush islands with sandy beaches.</s>Scientists say they have identified the world’s oldest lizard fossil, a discovery that provides insight into the evolution of lizards and snakes. The fossil, shown in a handout photo, which is 240 million years old, is called Megachirella wachtleri and believed to be the most ancient ancestor of the reptiles known as squamates. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-University of Alberta - Tiago Simoes MANDATORY CREDIT

EDMONTON — Scientists say they have identified the world’s oldest lizard fossil — a discovery that sheds light on the evolution of lizards and snakes.

The fossil, which is 240 million years old, is called Megachirella wachtleri and is believed to be the most ancient ancestor of scaled reptiles known as squamates. The conclusion is based on an analysis of data from both living and extinct reptiles.

The research by scientists in Alberta — as well as in Australia, Italy and the United States — was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“It’s a fossil lizard that we found to be the oldest-known lizard on the planet,” said Tiago Simões, a PhD student in the University of Alberta’s biological sciences department and the study’s lead author.

The specimen is 75 million years older than thought when it was first described in 1993, he said.

Simões said it fills a gap in understanding the evolution of lizards and snakes.

There are about 10,000 species of squamates around the world, and scientists say they are still learning about the early stages of the animals’ evolution.

Researchers initially thought the fossil, which was found in northern Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, was related to but not actually a lizard.

Further analysis, however, determined it to be the oldest relative of existing lizards and snakes, which, Simões pointed out, are essentially limbless lizards.

He said researchers in the last four years compiled the largest dataset ever. It included micro CT scans, photographs and molecular analysis rather than relying on previous research.

“We are sure it’s a lizard by the particular combination of features,” said Simões.

Some of those features include the shape of bones in the brain, shoulder and trunk of the fossil. The results indicate a more gradual evolution than previously thought.

“It’s important … to understand how such a diverse and important component of the modern biological world originated,” said Simões. “There has been a lot of hot debate in the past.

“For the first time, we are providing agreement.”

He said it’s also valuable to know how invertebrates evolved during drastic shifts in environmental conditions.

“One of the things we learned in this study was that most of the larger groups of reptiles were already present in the Permian period, which means they were present and evolved before the largest mass extinction in the history of the planet.”

The Permian mass extinction killed about 90 per cent of the Earth’s species.
Paleontologists at the University of Bristol announce, through the Nature journal, the discovery of the world's oldest lizard fossil, estimated to be 240 million years old. The fossil, Megachirella wachtleri, is the most ancient known ancestor of all modern lizards and snakes.