Megachirella, the oldest squamate

[Halichoeres]

There's a nice writeup in the New York Times about Megachirella, which was recently proposed as the earliest squamate (the group that includes true lizards, snakes, and amphisbaenians). It was described in 2003 and the new phylogenetic placement was proposed back in May, but it's getting some late media buzz. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/science/lizards-snakes-fossils-squamates.html

Some of the new data suggesting its new placement in the tree were only accessible by CT scanning, which wasn't done for the original description (15 years ago, CT scans were much more expensive).



Here's the paper (open access, I think, but if not I can get you a pdf): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0093-3