Fossil of new species of Australian skink

[Still Waters]

Some of Australia's most famous animals—wombat, platypus, kangaroos and the extinct marsupial tiger thylacine—have been traced back to their fossil ancestors in remarkable finds in central South Australia.

Now a remote expedition to a large inland salt lake in 2017 has sifted through remains unearthed in Namba Formation deposits to describe a tiny new skink, an ancestor of Australia's well-known bluetongue lizards—to be named in honor of world-renown Flinders University lizard researcher Professor Mike Bull.

The new species, unveiled in the Royal Society's Open Science today, is described as Australia's oldest—a 25 million-year-old skink named Proegernia mikebulli after the late Flinders University Professor Mike Bull.

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-australian-fossil-lizard.html