Sometimes the biggest finds come in the smallest (fossil) packages
Microscopic photograph of a lower jaw from Funcusvermis gilmorei soon after it was recovered during microscopic sorting of sediment from the Thunderstorm Ridge fossil site in the Petrified Forest National Park Paleontology Lab. CREDIT: Photo by Ben Kligman for Virginia Tech.
“Seeing the first jaw under the microscope, with its distinctive double row of teeth, sent chills down my back,” Virginia Tech doctoral student Ben Klingman and co-author of the new study said. “We immediately knew it was a caecilian, the oldest caecilian fossil ever found, and a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”
Klingman named the new fossil “Funcusvermis gilmorei.” The genus name ‘Funcusvermis’ was inspired by a song by the Ohio Players called “shares some skeletal features with early frog and salamander fossils and an ancient group of amphibians called dissorophoid temnospondyls. “Unlike living caecilians, Funcusvermis lacks many adaptations associated with burrowing underground, indicating a slower acquisition of features associated with an underground lifestyle in the early stages of caecilian evolution,”
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