Fossil shows reptile species' aquatic transition
Scientists have identified a 244-million-year-old fossil named Austronaga in China, which is the earliest known archosauromorph highly adapted to aquatic life. This discovery challenges previous assumptions that early archosauromorphs were primarily land-dwelling.
Why it matters
This finding significantly alters the scientific understanding of reptile evolution and how early species adapted to aquatic environments after mass extinctions.
Chinese scientists have identified a 244-million-year-old reptile fossil from Southwest China's Yunnan province as the earliest known archosauromorph that was highly adapted to life in water, providing the first clear evidence that some early members of the evolutionary group had become almost completely aquatic.
The newly identified reptile, named Austronaga, challenges the long-held view that early archosauromorphs — a broad group that later gave rise to crocodiles, dinosaurs, pterosaurs and birds — were predominantly land-dwelling, with previously known aquatic members only partly adapted to life in water.
The study, led by Li Chun, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was recently published in Science Advances.
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