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Last year, the tiny fossil became big news. Trapped inside ancient amber, scientists thought they had found the skull of a tiny, hummingbird-like dinosaur with pointed teeth, bulging eyes, and surprisingly strong bones.
It was not like any ancient bird or dinosaur that had ever been discovered. This is because it was actually neither of them.
A similar skeleton in the same area now indicates that the so-called “tooth-eye bird” (Oculudentavis khaungraae) is actually a lizard. Its long snout has been so crushed over time that it resembles a beak.
“Imagine you take a lizard and pinch its nose in a triangle shape,” explains Edward Stanley, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History.
“It will look a lot like a bird.”
Bones digitally isolated from the skull of O. naga (left) and O. khaungraae (right). (Edward Stanley)
Even with a beak-like snout, some experts remained unconvinced by the discovery. In 2020, soon after the smallest known dinosaur was announced, scientists in the field began to question the classification.
While some early bird fossils have been found with mouths full of teeth – remnants of dinosaur heritage – these crickets are usually set in cavities, not directly attached to the jawbone; And no early bird had such lizard-like eyes.
In the end, these arguments were enough for the magazine’s editors to pull Oculudentavis’ paper altogether, declaring it a misclassification. While some of the study’s original authors continue to stick to their guns, another lizard fossil found nearby suggests that they were indeed wrong.
This new fossil also has a baffling appearance that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. At first glance, it doesn’t look like the other skull reported last year. But after isolating and comparing the bones found in each amber deposit, the researchers found several key comparisons between the two.
O. naga specimen with preserved bone and soft tissue. (Edward Stanley)
Both fossils are roughly the same size, have teeth attached to the jawbone, and have lizard-like eye cavities of the same size and shape. What’s more, the newly discovered fossil also has visible scales and a complete skull, with a hockey stick-shaped squamous bone found in all large-sized reptiles.
The two small fossils are not of the same species, but CT scans indicate that they belong to the same genus of lizard, which lived nearly 100 million years ago in the same region of the world. So the new species was named Oculudentavis naga.
“It’s a really strange animal,” says herpetologist Juan Diego Daza of Sam Houston State University. “It’s unlike any other lizard we have today.”
“We think it represents a group of slums that we were not aware of.”
Technical interpretation of O. Naga. (Stephanie Abramovich/Pereti Museum Foundation)
It is possible that the unusual features of both lizards are the reason why they have proven difficult to place in the animal kingdom. That, and the fact that the original Oculudentavis’ skull had a slightly compressed nose.
Reconstructing the original shape of these fossils was hard work, but it eventually showed that the nose of O. khaungraae had shrunk during fossilization.
Without this pressure, the researchers say, it would have resembled the long snout on another lizard fossil, O. naga, rather than the beak.
“Although it represents a domed skull and a long, tapering snout, it does not present meaningful physical figures that could be used to maintain a close relationship with birds, and all of its features indicate that it is a lizard,” says Susan Evans. He teaches vertebrate morphology and palaeontology at University College London.
The specimen of O. naga was so well preserved that scientists were even able to detect some soft tissue structures on the top of her nose and under her chin. These appear to be the loose skin flaps that the reptile may have puffed up during the show, which is common for other lizards.
Researchers still aren’t sure exactly where Oculudentavis sits in the lizard family, but at least for now they’re barking up the right tree.
The study was published in the journal Current Biology.
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