{"id":240608,"date":"2025-05-14T01:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T01:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/mysterious-fossil-found-in-museum-storage-turned-out-to-be-a-new-extinct-lizard-species\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T01:00:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T01:00:14","slug":"mysterious-fossil-found-in-museum-storage-turned-out-to-be-a-new-extinct-lizard-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=240608","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious Fossil Found in Museum Storage Turned Out to Be a New, Extinct Lizard Species"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Today, tegus are considered invasive creatures in Florida, but a new paper suggests they\u2019ve lived in the southeastern United States at least once before\u2014millions of years ago<\/h2>\n
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Sarah Kuta<\/a><\/p>\n

– Daily Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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Argentine black and white tegus (Salvator merianae<\/em>) were brought to the United States in the 1990s by exotic pet traders. They’ve since proliferated in the wild and been deemed an invasive species.
\n Bernard Dupont via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a><\/span>
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Years ago, Jason Bourque<\/a> was digging through storage at the Florida Museum of Natural History when he came across a mysterious vertebra from an unknown animal. He returned to the fossil again and again, trying to figure out which creature it had once belonged to, but he kept coming up empty.<\/p>\n

Now, Bourque finally has an answer. The half-inch-wide bone likely came from a previously unknown, extinct species of lizard known as a tegu, according to a statement<\/a> from the museum. Today, tegus in Florida are invasive<\/a>, having been introduced from South America. But the discovery suggests a similar reptile had prehistoric roots in the region.<\/p>\n

Bourque, a fossil preparator in the Florida Museum\u2019s vertebrate paleontology division, and his colleague Edward Stanley<\/a>, who directs the museum\u2019s digital imaging laboratory, described the new species in a paper published last month in the Journal of Paleontology<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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They named the creature Wautaugategu formidusi<\/em>. \u201cWautauga\u201d comes from the name of a forest located near where the fossil was initially unearthed in the early 2000s, according to the statement. It was discovered by workers at the Gragg Mine, a fuller\u2019s earth clay mine located just north of the Florida border in southwest Georgia, right before the mine closed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFormidus,\u201d meanwhile, is the Latin word for \u201cwarm.\u201d This part of the name is a nod to the particularly warm period in which the lizard lived, called the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum. At that time, between roughly 15 million and 17 million years ago<\/a>, sea levels were higher than they are now, and most of Florida was underwater. The historic coastline, for example, could have been in north Florida, not far from where the fossil was discovered. Because modern tegus are strong swimmers, the researchers suspect W. formidusi<\/em> may have swum from its native South America to the present-day southeastern United States, per the statement.<\/p>\n

But after that warm period ended and temperatures began to plummet, the cold-blooded W. formidusi<\/em> likely struggled to reproduce. Eventually, the species died out completely.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have any record of these lizards before that event, and we don\u2019t have any records of them after that event,\u201d Bourque says in the statement. \u201cIt seems they were here just for a blip, during that really warm period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on the lack of fossils, it appears W. formidusi<\/em> only enjoyed a brief stay in North America. But Bourque hopes to visit the Florida-Georgia border to search for more W. formidusi<\/em> fossils, which might offer further insights into the creature\u2019s sojourn.<\/p>\n

Tegus are terrestrial lizards that hail from South America. But roughly three decades ago, exotic pet traders began bringing Argentine black and white tegus (Salvator merianae<\/em>) to the United States. Eventually, though, the pet lizards either escaped or were released into the wild, where they established breeding populations and quickly multiplied<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Argentine black and white tegus can grow to nearly five feet long and weigh up to ten pounds. They\u2019re problematic because they feast on the eggs and hatchlings of many different native creatures, including some that are threatened or endangered, like gopher tortoises<\/a>. In Florida, they\u2019re now considered an invasive species<\/a> and, as of 2021<\/a>, it\u2019s illegal to own, breed or sell them (though existing pet tegus are allowed to live out the rest of their lives in captivity, with a permit).<\/p>\n

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A reptile rescuer holds an Argentine black and white tegu at the\u00a0Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Brighton, England, in 2015. The animals are kept as exotic pets and became invasive in Florida after being introduced to its environment.<\/p>\n

Carl Court \/ Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The newly identified fossil adds an earlier chapter to this story. The findings suggest tegus have lived in Florida at least once before, millions of years ago, though any relation between the two species isn\u2019t clear.<\/p>\n

Moving forward, the researchers hope to continue perfecting the novel technique they used to identify the fossil. First, they took a computed tomography (CT) scan of the vertebra to create a detailed, 3D image. Then, they carefully measured and noted the location of any \u201clandmarks\u201d on the image\u2014things like holes, bumps, ridges and grooves.<\/p>\n

Finally, they used artificial intelligence to compare the 3D image with more than 100 other 3D images of lizard vertebrae in an online database. The machine learning technique helped them identify the creature as a tegu and even located the vertebra\u2019s original position in the middle of the lizard\u2019s spine.<\/p>\n

This method, the researchers say, speeds up the identification of fossils, a process that typically relies on the time and specialized knowledge of experienced paleontologists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are boxes full, shelves full, of fossils that are unsorted, because it requires a huge amount of expertise to identify these things, and nobody has time to look through them comprehensively,\u201d Stanley says in the statement. \u201cThis is a first step towards some of that automation, and it\u2019s very exciting [to] see where it goes from here.\u201d<\/p>\n

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