By Sid PerkinsNov. 7, 2017
, 7:01 PM
This beautifully preserved,
nearly complete fossil is shedding new light on the evolution of the aquatic
members of a small, enigmatic group of ancient reptiles called pleurosaurs. The
bones belong to a
new species of pleurosaur whose anatomical features weren’t fully
adapted to water, but were on the way to enabling an aquatic lifestyle. The
creature (which the scientists dubbed Vadasaurus, Latin for “wading
lizard”) lived 155 million years ago and didn’t have the elongated trunk or
relatively shorter limbs that later aquatic species of pleurosaurs did, the
researchers report today in Royal Society Open Science.
So, Vadasaurus would have been less streamlined overall than its
aquatic kin, they suggest.
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