Tuesday, June 12, 2007

New Triassic Gliding Reptile


A remarkable new long-necked, gliding reptile discovered in 220 million-year old sediments of eastern north America is described in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Vol. 27, No. 2), scientists report. Mecistotrachelos apeoros (meaning "soaring, long-necked") is based on two fossils excavated at the Solite Quarry that straddles the Virginia-North Carolina state line.

Nick Fraser of the Virginia Museum of Natural History, who discovered the fossils, said said "one of the really neat things about the new glider is the feet. They are preserved in a hooked posture which is unusual and strongly suggests a grasping habit, further emphasizing a life style in the trees." It probably fed on insects, scuttling up tree trunks and foraging on the way, before gliding onto neighboring trees.

Fraser said that while two other reptiles with similar gliding membranes are known from the Triassic Period, they have much shorter necks and therefore conform more to the modern gliding lizard, Draco.

The relationships of Mecistotrachelos are unclear, but Fraser considers that it is probably related to the protorosaurs. Protorosaurs are a group of extinct reptiles characterized by a long-necked, including the bizarre Tanystropheus which had a neck longer than the length of the body and tail combined.


It seems that everything wanted to get in the air in the Triassic!

Update: National Geographic also has a post on this, but I think they boo-boo'ed wrt to the relatives of this critter. I don't think anyone meant this to be a pterosaur relative. The pict is from there too.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

SF author Michael Swanwick had something very like this in his time-travel novel _Bones of the Earth_.

(By "something very like this", I mean small gliding lizardlike reptiles in the Triassic. They don't do anything... they're just part of the scenery.)


Doug M.

Will Baird said...

huh. Interesting.

Based on descriptions of the thickened rib structure for muscle attachment and the rendering above, it almost made me think that we just missed the chance to have insect-like wings. It'd require some serious engineering though.