Science news sites this week are covering an article published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, but the headlines are a little surprising given the subject of the research.
Authors Nicholas Longrich and colleagues explain that recent re-examinations of fossil snakes and lizards from just before and just after the event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs (likely a meteor impact) suggests that these animals were more affected by the event than was previously recognized.
Whereas researchers had concluded that most snake and lizard species survived the event, Longrich et al. argue that as many as 83% of squamates (as the group that consists of both snakes and lizards are known) went extinct during this time, about 65 million years ago.
Most news sources, however, picked up on the fact that one of the two newly described species of lizards included in the report is named Obamadon gracilis.
That's right-- "Obamadon," a new genus name, is a tribute to our president, who Longrich claims, "has these tall, straight incisors and a great smile."
Apparently, so did the lizard.
Authors Nicholas Longrich and colleagues explain that recent re-examinations of fossil snakes and lizards from just before and just after the event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs (likely a meteor impact) suggests that these animals were more affected by the event than was previously recognized.
Whereas researchers had concluded that most snake and lizard species survived the event, Longrich et al. argue that as many as 83% of squamates (as the group that consists of both snakes and lizards are known) went extinct during this time, about 65 million years ago.
Most news sources, however, picked up on the fact that one of the two newly described species of lizards included in the report is named Obamadon gracilis.
That's right-- "Obamadon," a new genus name, is a tribute to our president, who Longrich claims, "has these tall, straight incisors and a great smile."
Apparently, so did the lizard.
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| The fossil jaw of Obamadon gracilis, whose teeth are said to resemble the President's (from Figure 1 in Longrich et al. (2012) http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/12/07/1211526) |
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| A reconstruction of Obamadon (the small lizard on the bottom left) |
1 comment:
I know one of the misconceptions I'd gotten from popular science sources was that the K-Pg mass extinction hit dinosaurs particularly hard without seeming to affect other groups very much. But it looks like the extinction was pretty wide-spread. The article you just linked to showed how much it affected squamates. There's a graph in this article, Why Did Mammals Survive When Dinosaurs Perished?, that shows how many mammals went extinct. And if you scroll about 2/3 of the way down this entry that I wrote, Book Review - Archaeopteryx: The Icon of Evolution, you'll see a figure showing that quite a few birds went extinct at the same time, as well.
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