Date: February 25, 2019
Source: University of Bristol
Using two
partially fragmented fossil skulls, a student at the University of Bristol has
digitally reconstructed, in three-dimensions, the skulls of two species of
ancient reptile that lived in the Late Triassic, one of which had been
previously known only from its jaws.
The
research was completed by Sofia Chambi-Trowell, an undergraduate in Bristol's
School of Earth Sciences, as part of her final-year project for her degree in
Palaeobiology.
Clevosaurus was
a lizard-like reptile that was first named back in 1939 from specimens found at
Cromhall Quarry, near Bristol.
Since
then, similar beasts have been found elsewhere around Bristol and in South
Wales, as well as in China and North America. Clevosaurus was an
early representative of an ancient group of reptiles called Rhynchocephalia,
which today is represent only by the tuatara of New Zealand.
In her
project, Sofia worked on new fossils of Clevosaurus hudsoni, the first
species to be named, and Clevosaurus cambrica, which was named from a
quarry site in South Wales in 2018.
She used
CT scans of both skulls to reconstruct their original appearance, and she found
evidence that the two species, which lived at the same time in the Late
Triassic, some 205 million years ago, showed significant differences.
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