A fossil has been discovered in New Zealand that scientists have determined belongs to an ancient marine reptile - an ancestor of dinosaurs.
The fragment of a vertebra was found by paleontologist Hamish Campbell in the Balmacaan Stream at the foot of Mount Harper in the Canterbury region of central South Island back in 1978. All these decades it lay in the local museum's repository, and only now have scientists studied and identified it. It turned out that the vertebra belongs to a nothosaur - one of the most ancient marine reptiles on Earth.
The fossil was studied by a group of scientists from New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Australia and East Timor. After completing all the research, paleontologists announced that the 246-million-year-old fossil overturns long-standing theories about the natural history of the Earth.
"We now know the age of the fossil, and it is significantly older than the oldest known similar finds in the Southern Hemisphere," Campbell said. According to him, previously scientists were not sure whether nothosaur lived in the Southern Hemisphere. "A huge part of what we, humanity, know about this group of organisms is based on fossils from the Northern Hemisphere," he said, specifying that the find dates back to the Early Triassic period.
Nothosaurus were the predecessors of plesiosaurs, massive swimming lizards with long necks and flippers. "It is a sauropterygian, that is, a 'lizard-like fin', a marine reptile," Campbell noted. - They had long necks and relatively small,elongated, flattened heads with many sharp teeth that protruded outward, ideal for catching fish and squid. They had long tails and were likely to move extremely quickly."
According to him, the fossil is millions of years older than the oldest known dinosaurs and mammals. "They thrived after the Great Permian Extinction. About 252 million years ago, something truly dramatic happened on the planet, which marked the beginning of the Triassic period," he said. - Then New Zealand looked completely different. We were part of the outskirts of South Gondwana and were very close to the pole. This fossil was found in deposits that may have accumulated in relatively deep waters off the coast of Gondwana."
The study showed that nothosaur lived in a shallow coastal environment within the Southern Polar Circle, now the interior of Canterbury. "There is a chance to find more fossils in New Zealand, as we have many rocks of this age," the scientist noted.
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