A Fossil of a Bizarre Snake-Like Lizard Has Generated Controversy Beyond Its Identity - SciTechDaily

With four tiny legs and an extraordinarily long body, a fossil of the snake-like lizard Tetrapodophis amplectus has created controversy.

In 2015, the journal Science published a paper claiming that this elongate lizard was a snake with four legs.

The discovery of such a specimen could tell us a great deal about the pattern and process of snake evolution — if it was indeed a snake.

In late 2015, two members of our research team traveled to Solnhofen, Germany, to study the specimen and conduct firsthand observation of the anatomy of the fossil.

The results of our team’s detailed anatomical restudy of Tetrapodophis refute the hypothesis that it is a snake.

Using these corrected data, our analyses of evolutionary relationships found Tetrapodophis to be a dolichosaur, not a snake.

The fossil of Tetrapodophis was found this way and is now on two slabs of rock.

The quadrate bone, which suspends the lower jaw from the skull in lizards, is also preserved.

Numerous living lizards — for example, skinks, anguids and pygopodid geckos — are legless or limb-reduced.

They all evolved leglessness independent of each other — known as convergent evolution — but retained the skull features of their respective lizard kind.

Tetrapodophis is an amazing and bizarre little lizard even without being interpreted as a four-legged snake.

Unlike any other lizard with limbs, Tetrapodophis has about 148 vertebrae between the front legs and the hips.

Scientific specimens — in paleontology, genetics, archeology or any other field — have a provenance and are intimately linked to people, culture, countries and laws.

As of November 2021, the specimen of Tetrapodophis remains in Germany in a private collection, on loan to a private museum: the Bürgermeister-Müller Museum Solnhofen.

The scientific study of privately owned fossil specimens also runs afoul of ethics policies, such those of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

We completed our re-examination of the specimen in an effort to correct the record and describe this bizarre fossil lizard for what it is.

November 25, 2021

November 25, 2021

November 25, 2021

November 25, 2021

November 25, 2021

November 25, 2021