Photograph of the new reptile’s fossil that was found by a young boy on Prince Edward Island, Canada. (Credit: Modesto et al.)
Researchers have discovered a new genus and species of reptile from a 300-million-year-old fossil from Prince Edward Island. The fossil was found in PEI by a young boy and its family, and the species was named in his family’s honour, Erpetonyx arsenaultorum.
This discovery indicates that reptiles at the end of this era were more diverse than suggested by previous data.
This fossil is one of the most complete reptile fossil of the Carboniferous era and is the closest and oldest relative ever found of an enigmatic group of early reptiles that have been implicated in the origin of turtles, called bolosaurid parareptiles.
Original research paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on January 13, 2014.
Names and affiliations of selected authors
