Ancient reptile found in desert

A species of extinct lizard that lived 80 million years ago has been discovered in a desert in South America. The fossilised lizard known as

Gueragama sulamericana was found in the rocks of the city of Cruzeiro do Oeste in Brazil and belonged to a group of lizards called acrodontans, which had teeth fused to their jaws.

This is the first acrodontan found in South America. The reptiles were much more common in what became the Old World and the discovery suggests that reptile groups achieved worldwide distribution before the break-up of the supercontinent Pangaea.

Prof Michael Caldwell, from the University of Alberta, said: “It’s a missing link in the sense of the paleobiogeography and possibly the origins of the group, so it’s pretty good evidence to suggest that the southern part of Pangaea was still a kind of single continental chunk.”