Ophisaurus is a genus of superficially snake-like lizards in the family Anguidae. Although most species have no legs, their head shapes, movable eyelids, and external ear openings identify them as lizards. A few species have very small, stub-like legs near their rear vents. These are vestigial organs, meaning they once served an evolved purpose but are no longer used. They reach lengths of up to 1.2 metres (4 ft), but about two-thirds of this is the tail. Glass lizards feed on insects, spiders, other small reptiles, and young rodents. Their diets are limited by their inability to unhinge their jaws. Some glass lizards give birth to live young but most lay eggs.
Pseudopus is a genus of anguid lizards that are native to Eurasia. One extant species remains, the sheltopusik, with four fossil species. They are the most robust members of subfamily Anguinae. The oldest fossils of the group date to the Early Miocene, but there are possible Oligocene records.
The geology of Hampshire in southern England broadly comprises a gently folded succession of sedimentary rocks dating from the Cretaceous and Palaeogene periods. The lower (early) Cretaceous rocks are sandstones and mudstones whilst those of the upper (late) Cretaceous are the various formations which comprise the Chalk Group and give rise to the county's downlands. Overlying these rocks are the less consolidated Palaeogene clays, sands, gravels and silts of the Lambeth, Thames and Bracklesham Groups which characterise the Hampshire Basin.
The Lambeth Group is a stratigraphic group, a set of geological rock strata in the London and Hampshire Basins of southern England. It comprises a complex of vertically and laterally varying gravels, sands, silts and clays deposited between 56-55 million years before present during the Ypresian age. It is found throughout the London Basin with a thickness between 10m and 30m and the Hampshire Basin with a thickness between 50m and less than 25m. Although this sequence only crops out in these basins, the fact that it underlies 25% of London at a depth of less than 30m means the formation is of engineering interest for tunnelling and foundations.
Ampfield is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Test Valley in Hampshire, England, between Romsey, Eastleigh, and Winchester. It had a population at the 2001 census of 1,474, increasing to 1,583 at the 2011 Census.
Barton Beds is the name given to a series of grey and brown clays, with layers of sand, of Upper Eocene age, which are found in the Hampshire Basin of southern England. They are particularly well exposed in the cliffs at Barton-on-Sea, which is the type locality for the Barton Beds, and lends its name to the Bartonian age of the Eocene epoch. The clay is abundant in fossils, especially molluscs.
Seymouriamorpha were a small but widespread group of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods). They have long been considered reptiliomorphs, and most paleontologists may still accept this point of view, but some analyses suggest that seymouriamorphs are stem-tetrapods. Many seymouriamorphs were terrestrial or semi-aquatic. However, aquatic larvae bearing external gills and grooves from the lateral line system have been found, making them unquestionably amphibians. The adults were terrestrial. They ranged from lizard-sized creatures to crocodile-sized 150 centimeter long animals. They were reptile-like. If seymouriamorphs are reptiliomorphs, they were the distant relatives of amniotes. Seymouriamorphs form into three main groups, Kotlassiidae, Discosauriscidae, and Seymouriidae, a group that includes the best known genus, Seymouria. The last seymouriamorph became extinct by the end of the Permian.
Discosauriscus was a small seymouriamorph which lived in what is now Central and Western Europe in the Early Permian Period. Its best fossils have been found in the Broumov and Bačov Formations of Boskovice Furrow, in the Czech Republic.
The Hampshire Basin is a geological basin of Palaeogene age in southern England, underlying parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, and Sussex. Like the London Basin to the northeast, it is filled with sands and clays of Paleocene and younger ages and it is surrounded by a broken rim of chalk hills of Cretaceous age.
Paleontology or palaeontology is the study of prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of plant and animal fossils. This includes the study of body fossils, tracks (ichnites), burrows, cast-off parts, fossilised feces (coprolites), palynomorphs and chemical residues. Because humans have encountered fossils for millennia, paleontology has a long history both before and after becoming formalized as a science. This article records significant discoveries and events related to paleontology that occurred or were published in the year 2010.
Makowskia is an extinct genus of discosauriscid seymouriamorph known from the early Permian of Boskovice Furrow, in the Czech Republic. It was first named by Jozef Klembara in 2005 and the type species is Makowskia laticephala. The generic name honors Alexander Makowsky for describing the first specimens of discosauriscids from the Boskovice Furrow, and the specific name means “broad” + “head”. Makowskia is known only from one specimen, the holotype SNMZ 26506, a skull and anterior portion of postcranial skeleton. A phylogenetic analysis places Makowskia as the sister taxon to Spinarerpeton.
Bahndwivici is an extinct genus of lizard known from a nearly complete and articulated skeleton discovered in rocks of the Green River Formation of Wyoming, United States. The skeleton is very similar to that of the modern Chinese crocodile lizard, Shinisaurus.
Afairiguana avius is an extinct iguanid lizard known from a nearly complete and articulated skeleton discovered in rocks of the Early Eocene-aged Green River Formation of Wyoming, United States. As of the initial description, the skeleton represents the oldest complete iguanian from the Western Hemisphere, and is the oldest representative of the extant iguanid family of anoles, Polychrotidae.
Shinisauria is a clade or evolutionary grouping of anguimorph lizards that includes the living Chinese crocodile lizard Shinisaurus and several of its closest extinct relatives. Shinisauria was named in 2008 as a stem-based taxon to include all anguimorphs more closely related to Shinisaurus than to any other lizard. Several recent phylogenetic analyses of lizard evolutionary relationships place Shinisauria in a basal position within the clade Platynota, which also includes monitor lizards, helodermatids, and the extinct mosasaurs. Shinisaurians were once thought to be closely related to the genus Xenosaurus, but they are now considered distant relatives within Anguimorpha. The fossil record of shinisaurians extends back to the Early Cretaceous with Dalinghosaurus, which is from the Aptian aged Yixian Formation of China. Two other extinct shinisaurians are currently known: Bahndwivici from the Eocene of Wyoming and Merkurosaurus from the Late Oligocene of Germany and the Early Miocene of the Czech Republic. An indeterminate shinisaurian is known from an isolated tail found in the Eocene aged Messel pit in Germany.
The San Jose Formation is an Early Eocene geologic formation in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico and Colorado.
Anniealexandria is an extinct genus of amphisbaenian lizard known by the type species Anniealexandria gansi from the earliest Eocene of Wyoming. Anniealexandria is the only known member of the family Bipedidae in the fossil record, which otherwise only includes the extant genus Bipes from Mexico. It was named in 2009 in honor of Annie Montague Alexander, founder of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Remains of Anniealexandria are known only from a single fossil locality in the Bighorn Basin called Castle Gardens, but within the locality its fossils are common in the Willwood Formation, usually consisting of isolated jaw bones and vertebrae. Anniealexandria seems to have been a common component of a paleofauna that included fifteen other lizard species and existed in western North America during a period of global warming in the latest Paleocene and earliest Eocene.
Suzanniwana is an extinct genus of iguanian lizards that lived in western North America during the earliest Eocene, approximately 56 million years ago. Two species are known from the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming: the type species S. patriciana named in 2009, and the species S. revenanta named in 2013. Suzanniwana lived during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, a brief period of global warming that resulted in warmer and drier conditions in the Bighorn Basin. It likely stemmed from a lineage that had migrated into the basin from regions farther to the south, following a latitudinal band of constant climatic conditions that moved northward as the planet warmed. Suzanniwana shares many skeletal features with modern casquehead lizards of the family Corytophanidae and may be a stem-corytophanid. It also closely resembles Geiseltaliellus, an iguanian from the middle Eocene Messel pit in Germany.
Anolbanolis is an extinct genus of iguanian lizards that lived in the Bighorn Basin of what is now Wyoming during the earliest Eocene. The type species A. banalis was named by paleontologist Krister Smith in 2009 from a collection of isolated skull fragments found in a layer of the Willwood Formation that dates to a brief period of global warming called the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) about 56 million years ago. The genus name Anolbanolis means "poor anole" from the Greek anolbos and the name Anolis, in reference to the scrappy nature of known fossil material and its close resemblance to lizards in the genus Anolis. Smith suggested that Anolbanolis may be a close relative of Anolis or Polychrus, which are common today in Central and South America but not found as far north as Wyoming, fitting with the idea that the Bighorn Basin was warmer and wetter in the Eocene than it is currently. According to Smith, the species name banalis is a reference to it being a "banal" lizard in the Willwood, being "quite abundant in the type locality," and not unusual because "the discovery of Eocene boreal fossil members of living subtropical and tropical clades is becoming commonplace." In 2011 Smith named a second species of Anolbanolis, A. geminus, which lived in the Bighorn Basin shortly after the PETM and was about 50 percent larger than A. banalis. Smith concluded on the basis of features in A. geminus that Anolbanolis is more closely related to Anolis than it is to Polychrus.
Babibasiliscus a babibawhhaaa? is an extinct genus of casquehead lizard that lived in what is now Wyoming during the early Eocene, approximately 48 million years ago. The genus is known from a single species, Babibasiliscus alxi, which was named by paleontologist Jack Conrad in 2015 on the basis of a fossilized skull from the Bridger Formation in the Green River Basin. The name Babibasiliscus comes from the Shoshoni word babi, meaning "older male cousin", and Basiliscus, a modern-day genus of casquehead lizards. The specimen is undeformed and nearly complete except for the tip of the snout and the top of the skull, making it unclear whether the distinctive bony crest of living corytophanids was present in prehistoric relatives like Babibasiliscus. The skull is about 42 millimetres (2 in) in length and the entire body is estimated to have been about 0.6 metres (2 ft) long. Bones on the right side of lower jaw of the specimen are thickened and fused together, suggesting that the jaw had broken and healed when the animal was alive.
Merkurosaurus is an extinct genus of lizards from the Shinisauria that is known from the Late Oligocene of Germany, collected in 1999, and the Early Miocene Most Formation of the Czech Republic and the Wiesbaden Formation Germany of (Amöneburg). A single species, M. ornatus, is known and was named and described by Jozef Klembara in 2008 based on the holotype Pb 02045 and other referred specimens. It was initially only known from deposits in the Czech Republic but remains found in Germany were eventually attributed to the genus in 2015.
