A fossil that was discovered on Prince Edward Island, Canada over 14 years ago by a boy has turned out to belong to a new species of reptile.
The 8.5-inch-long fossil was found on the boy’s family’s farmland in Prince County and was later taken to the Royal Ontario Museum in 2004.
Sean Modesto, a professor of biology at Cape Breton University, started researching the fossil, erpetonyx arsenaultorum, four years ago.
He said the fossil is one of the most complete reptile fossils from the Carboniferous era, which was 300 million years ago. â€It’s the only specimen we know of from this particular part of the Carboniferous and it’s the only reptile from that slice of time,†he said.
Modesto added that the reptile is the closest and oldest relative ever found of a group of early reptiles called bolosaurids parareptiles.
Previous research showed that parareptiles had one ancestor that made it through the Carboniferous era into the early Permian era, and that that ancestor only branched off during the Permian. But this discovery proves that there was a much higher diversity of reptiles at the end of the Carboniferous era than we believed – about 80 per cent higher!
“This one specimen allows us to say, ‘Yes, reptiles aren’t these very mysterious animals right at the end of the Carbonigerous. Here’s evidence that they’re actually more diverse than the fossil records indicate.’ “
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