Researchers in Tunisia found “worm lizard” that has ever lived with a feeding strategy that has remained consistent for millions of years. The recently identified Terastiodontosaurus marcelosanchezi existed a whopping 50 million years ago at a time when warm temperatures might have encouraged its astonishing growth.
Slithering up to three feet long, the reptile belongs to a new genus and species of amphisbaenians, a “charismatic group” of “legless lizards” that has “attracted and puzzled researchers since the 19th century.”
Recent fieldwork in Eocene levels of the Natural Park of Djebel Chambi, Tunisia, “led to the discovery of one of the oldest records of Amphisbaenia in Afro-Arabia,” according to a new study.
Though known as a fossil-bearing site, it has yet to produce a reptile until now, and researchers uncovered at least 11 different specimens.
The fossils found include craniodental and vertebral remains so “unusual” that researchers had to classify this striking specimen as a new genus and species within an intriguing family of reptiles. “Our discovery from Tunisia, with an estimated skull length exceeding five centimeters, is the largest known worm lizard species,” Dr. Georgios L. Georgalis, the research head, explained.
The Terastiodontosaurus showed an “extreme dental morphology, including one massive tooth on the maxilla and dentary, flat cheek teeth, and an array of other diagnostic features that readily differentiate from all other amphisbaenians.” Most worm lizards are subterranean, but this giant might have been too big to remain completely underground, giving it an unusual behavioral pattern amongst the group.