What reptile's bones can teach us about Earth's perilous past

[Still Waters]

An extinct reptile's oddly shaped chompers, fingers, and ear bones may tell us quite a bit about the resilience of life on Earth, according to a new study.

In fact, paleontologists at Yale, Sam Houston State University, and the University of the Witwatersrand say the 250-million-year-old reptile, known as Palacrodon, fills in an important gap in our understanding of reptile evolution. It's also a signal that reptiles, plants, and ecosystems may have fared better or recovered more quickly than previously thought after a mass extinction event wiped out most of the plant and animal species on the planet.

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-reptile-bones-earth-perilous.html

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joa.13770