Australian blue tongue lizard ancestor was round-in-the-tooth

Reconstruction of the most complete fossil lizard found in Australia, a 15 million year old relative of our modern blue tongues and social skinks named Egernia gillespieae, reveals the creature was equipped with a robust crushing jaw and was remarkably similar to modern lizards.

The reassembled skull bones of Egernia gillespieae, a 15 million year old skink from Riversleigh World Heritage
Area of northwestern Queensland.Remarkably similar to modern social skinks (silhouette shown)
E. gillespieae instead is equipped with rounded crushing teeth and a deep, thick jaw
[Credit: M. Hutchinson, P. Stokes and K. Thorn]

A new study lead by Flinders University PHD student Kailah Thorn, published in Vertebrate Palaeontology, combined the anatomy of of living fossils with DNA data to put a time scale on the family tree of Australia's 'social skinks'.

"This creature looked like something in-between a tree skink and a bluetongue lizard. It would have been about 25 cm long, and unlike any of the living species it was equipped with robust crushing jaws," says Ms Thorn.

The results show that our Australia's bluetongue lizards split from Egernia as early as 25 million years ago.