London, Oct 27 (PTI) A fossil discovery in Scotland has brought to light new information on the early evolution of lizards during the time of the dinosaurs, according to a research.

The tiny skeleton called Bellairsia gracilis discovered on the Isle of Skye is only six centimetres long and dates from the Middle Jurassic period, 166 million years ago, said the study, which has been published in the journal Nature.

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The exceptional new fossil comprises a near-complete skeleton in life-like articulation, missing only the snout and tail. This makes it the most complete fossil lizard of this age anywhere in the world, according to the study.

The first author of the study, Dr Mateusz Talanda, from the University of Warsaw and University College London (UCL), said, "This little fossil lets us see evolution in action."

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"In palaeontology, you rarely have the opportunity to work with such complete, well-preserved fossils coming from a time about which we know so little," Talanda said.

Bellairsia has a mixture of ancestral and modern features in its skeleton, providing evidence of what the ancestor of today's lizards, which are part of the wider animal group known as 'squamates', might have looked like.

"Bellairsia has some modern lizard features, like traits related to cranial kinesis – that's the movement of the skull bones in relation to one another. This is an important functional feature of many living squamates," Talanda said.

Squamates are the living group that includes lizards and snakes, and comprises more than 10,000 species today, making them one of the most species-rich living vertebrate animal groups.

The group includes animals as diverse as snakes, chameleons, and geckos, and is characterised by numerous specialised features of the skull and rest of the skeleton.

The earliest origins of squamates lie 240 million years ago in the Triassic but a lack of fossils from the Triassic and Jurassic has made their early evolution and anatomy difficult to trace.

The research is a joint project between researchers at the universities of Warsaw, Oxford and UCL.

The fossil was found in 2016 by a team led by Oxford University and National Museums Scotland. It is one of the several new fossil discoveries from the island, including early amphibians and mammals, which are revealing evolution of important animal groups that persist to the present day.

Co-author Dr Elsa Panciroli from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and National Museums Scotland, who discovered the fossil, said, "It was one of the first fossils I found when I began working on Skye."

"The little black skull was poking out from the pale limestone, but it was so small I was lucky to spot it. Looking closer I saw the tiny teeth, and realised I had found something important, but we had no idea until later that almost the whole skeleton was in there,"Panciroli said.

Analysing the new fossil alongside living and extinct fossil squamates confirms Bellairsia belongs to the 'stem' of the squamate family tree. This means that it split from other lizards just before the origin of modern groups, according to the study.

The research also supports the finding that geckos are a very early branching lineage, and that the enigmatic fossil Oculudentavis, previously suggested to be a dinosaur, is also a stem squamate.

To study the specimen, the team used X-ray computed tomography (CT) which, like medical CT, allows for non-invasive 3D imaging. This allowed the researchers to image the entire fossil, even though most of the specimen is still hidden by surrounding rock.

Whereas medical scanners work at the millimetre scale, the Oxford University CT scanner revealed details down to a few tens of micrometres. Parts of the skeleton were then imaged in even greater detail, including the skull, hindlimbs and pelvis, at the European Synchrotron (ESRF, Grenoble, France).

The intensity of the synchrotron beam permits a resolution of four micrometres, revealing details of the smallest bones in the skeleton.

Co-author Professor Roger Benson from the University of Oxford, said, "Fossils like this Bellairsia specimen have huge value in filling gaps in our understanding of evolution and the history of life on Earth."

"It used to be almost impossible to study such tiny fossils like this, but this study shows the power of new techniques including CT scanning to image these non-destructively and in great detail," Benson said.

Co-author Professor Susan Evans from UCL, who first described and named Bellairsia from a few jaw and skull bones from Oxfordshire 25 years ago, added, "It is wonderful to have a complete specimen of this tantalising little lizard, and to see where it fits in the evolutionary tree."

"Through fossils like Bellairsia, we are gaining a better understanding of early lizard anatomy. Angus Bellairs, the lizard embryologist after which Bellairsia was originally named, would have been delighted," the professor said.

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