This Ancient Reptile Evolved a Weird, Bird-Like Head 100 Million Years Before Birds Did

[Judi Lynn]

By Jake Buehler on 16 Oct 2017 at 12:00PM

Imagine an animal with the body of a chameleon, the feet and claws of an anteater, the humped back of a camel, and a tail that is both flattened like a beaver’s, but also like that of a scorpion. If you’re thinking this sounds like someone just threw your local zoo into a blender—or that it’s not far off from mythical creatures like the chimera or manticore—this would be understandable. But this bonkers description fits a real, long-extinct group of tree-dwelling reptiles that lived more than 200 million years ago. Now, a new species of these freaky little critters has been identified, and its fossilised remains pile onto the anatomical strangeness, showing that this ancient reptile evolved a toothless, remarkably bird-like head in a world 100 million years before birds with heads like this even existed.

The new species—Avicranium renestoi, unearthed in New Mexico and described in a new paper published in The Royal Society Open Science —is a member of an enigmatic lineage of Triassic reptiles known as the Drepanosauromorpha. Drepanosaurs have only been known to science for a handful of decades, turning up sporadically in North America and Europe.

What we know about them comes from incomplete skeletons of a small number of species, which are strikingly diverse in anatomy, each one discovered being stranger than the last. They appear to be specialized for a life stalking insects in the trees, with most species sporting powerful gripping limbs and long, prehensile tails. Because of these traits, drepanosaurs were at one time called “simiosaurs”, literally “monkey-lizards,” though they are only distantly related to actual lizards. Many species had tall humps and ridges over their shoulders, claw tips on their tails, and heads that were odd compared to their reptile contemporaries—triangular and fragile. The Avicranium fossil is an important find because it represents one of the few known drepanosaur skulls—one that has also retained its three-dimensional shape (unlike other mangled and compressed drepanosaur skulls).

More:
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/10/this-ancient-reptile-evolved-a-weird-bird-like-head-100-million-years-before-birds-did/

[Sneederbunk]

1. The chicken/egg controversy continues.

[Lochloosa]

2. That is solved. The egg came first.

Just not laid by a chicken.


“Just to settle it once and for all: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg, laid by a bird that was not a chicken.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson