Researchers have found what they describe as a burrowing reptile species that lived 250 million years in the past, communally in “complicated, underground burrows.” The lizards, Procolophon trigoniceps, have been found in what’s now central Karoo, South Africa. Researcher Roger Malcolm Harris Smith, College of the Witwatersrand notes in a paper in The Dialog that the reptile lived and died within the underground burrows.
The lizard had a brief neck, an elongated physique and tail and was about half a meter in size. It was comparable in dimension to a juvenile monitor lizard. It featured a flat cranium and horns that pointed towards the again. The enamel, the researchers say, have been designed to crush vegetation and maybe crayfish. Whereas fossils of this species have been first found in 1876, this marks the primary occasion the place the researchers discovered a grouping of those lizards at various phases of their lives in bone on bone contact. The researchers say that as a result of they have been discovered grouped collectively, the lizards died whereas huddling collectively, in an effort to stabilize their physique temperatures. Discovering the lizards in the identical burrows exhibits conclusively that they lived collectively and died collectively.
“The taphonomic proof helps earlier recommendations that P. trigoniceps was a group-living, presumably communal, fossorial reptile analogous in its life habits to Gopherus agassizii, an extant North American desert tortoise.” Graphical illustration College of the Witwatersrand
The researchers say that previous to this discovering, the notion that animals congregated collectively underground started with mammals. They notice that this lizard species lived 20 million years earlier than the primary mammals.
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“For the previous three years, I’ve headed a analysis staff that used neutron tomography – much like X-rays – to look into rock and produce 3D photos of the Procolophon skeletons inside,” Harris Smith mentioned in his article. “We have been amazed to have the ability to clearly establish an grownup Procolophon skeleton mendacity curled up on the underside of a big house or chamber on the finish of the burrow with the scattered bones of a juvenile mendacity on high.”
“Our analysis discovered that these historical reptiles used their entrance limbs to dig tunnels roughly one metre under the floor after which carve out chambers the place they lived collectively. We now know for the primary time that the rationale we discover Procolophon trigoniceps fossils in batches is that sand and dirt from flash floods generally stuffed their burrows, burying them whereas they hibernated. That is how, right this moment, within the rock outcrops of the central Karoo area of South Africa, we’ve been capable of finding a few of these historical colonies spectacularly fossilised with their occupants nonetheless intact.”
An summary of the analysis paper, “Skeletal accumulations of the parareptile Procolophon trigoniceps mirror fossorial response to Early Triassic climatic instability throughout southern Gondwana” might be learn on the ScienceDirect web site.
