Fossil hunters discover an ancient iguana that lived in a dinosaur nesting site in Montana
The newly discovered “mighty traveler of Egg Mountain” is an ancient lizard that lived 75 million years ago.
That’s 10 million years before dinosaurs went extinct.
Paleontologists discovered the fossilized remains of two almost-complete skeletons of this extinct critter in a dinosaur nesting site in northwestern Montana.
The animal has been officially dubbed Magnuviator ovimonsensis, which translates roughly to “mighty traveler of Egg Mountain,” and experts say it is an extremely unusual find.
“Most of the fossil lizards we find from the entire Mesozoic are just isolated jaws and vertebrates,” said David DeMar Jr., a post-doctorate fellow at the University of Washington who analyzed the new fossil. “To have multiple specimens this complete is very rare.”
The lizard was described this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The name is significant for a few reasons. The mighty part is a reference to the lizard’s size — about 8 inches from snout to rear, with a tail that may have added about 7 more inches to its overall length.
Although that makes Magnuviator much smaller than its dinosaur neighbors, it is still bigger than 80% of lizards alive today, DeMar said.
The traveler piece of the lizard’s name comes from the discovery of a nearly identical lizard skeleton in deposits in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia from roughly the same period.
“They almost look like the could be the same thing, but there are minor differences,” DeMar said.
He said the similarity between the lizard skeletons from Asia and North America suggest that Magnuviator’s ancestors likely migrated between the two continents by crossing over Beringia, a land bridge that once connected Alaska and Asia.
“If you look at Tyrannosaurs, Duck Billed Hadrosaurs and Triceratops, you can see close relationship between those in Asia and those in North America,” DeMar said. “It appears it was pretty common to have animals moving back and forth between these two continents.”
The Egg Mountain piece of Magnuviator ovimonsensis’ refers to the site in central Montana where two nearly complete skeletons of the animal were found.
DeMar said the site is different from most places where ancient fossils are preserved because it is neither a lake nor a flood plain.
Instead, he said these lizards lived in an arid environment that served as a nesting site for small bird-like, meat-eating Troodon dinosaurs and larger plant-eating Orodromeus. The fossilized remains of mammals also have been found at the site. Researchers also found wasp egg cases, which suggests wasps may have been a food source for the lizards.
“The fact that we found so many complete skeletons all together gives us a snapshot in time,” DeMar said.
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