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HBO ’s " Game of Thrones " have a " Mother of Dragons , " but a fossil that ’s hundreds of millions of twelvemonth old was recently identified as the " mother of all lizards " ( and snakes , too ) .
This ancient lizard was the unmediated ancestor of approximately 10,000 species awake today that have inhabited the planet for more than 240 million years .
About 240 million years ago,Megachirella wachtleritrod the vegetation in what is now the Dolomites region of northern Italy.
fossilist ab initio described the bantam reptile , Megachirella wachtleri , in 2003 . But late scan divulge feature in the fogy that were enshroud , enabling scientists to identifyMegachirellaas the oldest known ancestor in the squamate lineage — the reptile group that includes lounge lizard and snakes .
Megachirella , which predates the fogey previously thought to belong to the earliest squamates by around 75 million years , bridged the gap between the oldest know squamates and the figure blood of this reptile group derived from molecular datum , researcher reported in a raw study . [ In Photos : Amber Preserves Cretaceous Lizards ]
TheMegachirellafossil was found in the Alps in northern Italy . It was estimated it to be about 240 million years honest-to-goodness and scientists thought it belong to a lepidosaur , a type of archaic reptile . But certainlizard - like featureshinted that the fossil might provide valuable and unique clew about squamates , lead report author Tiago Simões , a doctorial campaigner in biologic sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton , Canada , told Live Science in an electronic mail .
Scientists found a preserved specimen ofMegachirella wachtleriin northern Italy and described it in 2003.
" It merit further attending — particularly in the form of CT [ work out tomography ] scan — to bring home the bacon great anatomical details and an improved information set , to understand its placement in the evolutionary tree diagram of reptiles , " Simões say .
The researchers used CT scans to build3D computer modelsof the dodo reptile , and found a bit of features linkingMegachirellato squamates . Two of those feature were unique to the squamate group : a part of the cranium and a collarbone anatomical structure . Together , those constituent identifiedMegachirellaas " the first unequivocal squamate from the Triassic , " accord to the study published online today ( May 30 ) in the journalNature .
Molecular and skeletal clues also indicate that geckoes , rather than iguanians ( which includes iguanas , anoles and chameleons ) , made up the former squamate mathematical group to rise up , the researchers reported .
Their grounds offer a critical and " really satisfying " missing piece of an evolutionary puzzle , by providing fossil grounds to support what molecular data point suggests aboutsquamate origins , Chris Raxworthy , curator - in - charge of the Department of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural chronicle in New York City , told Live Science .
" Scientists always love it when we see different types of data coming up with the same answer , " said Raxworthy , who was not affect in the study .
However , a turgid gap persists in the fogy record betweenMegachirella , which lived 240 million years ago , and otherfossil squamatesthat appeared no earlier than 168 million year ago . This go out much to be unraveled about the variety of these ancient Hydra and lizards and what they may have looked like , Simões sound out .
" What we are discovering is the tip of the berg , and much further work need to be done to interpret the early phylogeny of squamates , " he say .
Original article onLive scientific discipline .
