The discovery of Opisthiamimus gregori may one day illuminate the decline of the rhynchocephalian reptiles.
, still survives today. Similar in appearance to a stout, stocky iguana, this species — commonly called a tuatara — forms one of the only avenues for scientists to study the winnowing down of the rhynchocephalians.opens up another valuable source of information, which, according to the researchers, could one day show why rhynchocephalians declined to only a single surviving species.
"It’s fascinating when you have the dominance of one group giving way to another group over evolutionary time," Carrano says in . "We still need more evidence to explain exactly what happened, but fossils like this one are how we will put it together."Found at a site in Wyoming, the small fossil specimen features almost all of theskeleton, save for sections of its tail and legs. This, the research team says, makes the specimen particularly precious, since most similarly sized fossils are found shattered or in fragments thanks to the tough process of fossilization or the wearing away of rocks over time.
Opting to take full advantage of the completeness of the fossil, the team scanned the specimen from an assortment of angles to create an almost fully complete digital rendering. This rendering, in turn, revealed thatreached approximately 6 inches in length and likely lived on a steady flow of insects and other small invertebrates. The rendering also revealed that the rhynchocephalian species looked surprisingly similar to the surviving tuatara, despite being around five times smaller.
"Such a complete specimen has huge potential for making comparisons with fossils collected in the future and for identifying or reclassifying specimens already sitting in a museum drawer somewhere," concludes David DeMar Jr., another member of the team and a researcher at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, in a press release.
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