Fangs A Lot

An international team of scientists has discovered a significant haul of reptile and amphibian fossils in Brazil, dating from 278 million years ago.

17:46 06 November 2015

An international team of scientists has unearthed 278 million year old fossils in Brazil. These include two new species of "dvinosaur" – extinct cousins of modern salamanders, one of them with gills and fangs and South America’s oldest evern terrestrial reptile skeleton.

 

These discoveries are crucial as there is very little information about the plants and animals that occupied the north-eastern Brazil during the Permian period.

 

One of the study's co-authors, Dr Martha Richter from the Natural History Museum in London, said: "This discovery is remarkable as most of what we understand about the evolution and adaptation of amphibians through time is based on animals located in Europe and North America.

 

"Now that we know that their distant relatives inhabited a vast lake system in the tropical region of the supercontinent Pangaea... we can find out more about their abundance, palaeobiology, and how wide their distribution away from the equator was."

 

The researchers say that the fanged-and-gilled Timona anneae looked like a cross between a Mexican salamander and an eel. Meanwhile, procuhy nazariensis, was probably closely related but it had fewer bones.