Extinct 'Eagle Lizard' Found in Texas Canyon

Researchers recently learned that a fossil unearthed in 1989 was actually a new reptile species that lived roughly 218 million years ago in what is now a Texas canyon.

The newly identified species, Garzapelta muelleri, is a type of aetosaur, which means "eagle lizard" because the reptile's skull resembles that of a bird, according to a report by Sci.News. Like alligators, aetosaurs roamed wet regions across the supercontinent Pangea during the Late Triassic period, the University of California Museum of Paleontology says.

The museum says the aetosaurs were heavily armored with a crocodile's body, pig's snout and bird's skull. The newly discovered reptile was up to 11.5 feet long, according to a study about the newly identified species that was published in The Anatomical Record on January 11.

Aetosaurs were believed to be omnivores and herbivores. They vanished at the end of the Triassic period because of a mass extinction event.

The aetosaur's fossilized skeleton was first found by paleontologist Bill Mueller from Texas Tech University and local amateur collector Emmett Shedd in 1989 in the Cooper Canyon Formation in Garza County, Texas. But Mueller died in 2019, and many of his projects remained unfinished. William Reyes, a paleontologist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, was invited to lead the description of the new species that was published earlier this month in The Anatomical Record.

The skeleton was found along with the creature's carapace, a hard outer shell that is similar to that of a turtle. The study said that the carapace fossil provides "new insight" into carapace variation across the species and that the findings imply that researchers were "dealing with the emergence of a new group of aetosaur."

"Everyone agreed that it was indeed a new species, as it exhibited several unique features in its armor that differentiate it from any other known aetosaur species," Reyes told Newsweek. "However, where exactly it fell in the evolutionary tree of this group remained contentious."

Reyes said the next steps in his research include reassessing some of the aetosaur relatives of the Garzapelta species.

Researchers believe that aetosaurs lived across the world, as their fossils have been found in Europe and North and South America, the University of California museum said. The most common aetosaur fossils that researchers find are the hard plates that make up the body armor, the report said.

The discovery comes after researchers found two new species of an "iconic and bizarre" dinosaur group in North America at the end of last year.

Earlier this month, a fossil found by a pair of hikers last year was identified as the skull of a huge new species of prehistoric fish that lived around 72 million years ago.

Researchers also announced the discovery of the remains of a large flying reptile that roamed Earth's skies 100 million years ago during the age of the dinosaurs.

In other locations across the world, scientists are finding that species they thought were extinct are still thriving in the wild, like the De Winton's golden mole in South Africa and the Attenborough's long-beaked echidna in New Guinea.

"I think it's just fantastic that...we can still rediscover species," said Cobus Theron, a member of the research team that found the golden mole, in a press release. "All of our stories around conservation are doom and gloom. Here we have an opportunity to say that, actually, there are opportunities to make change."

Update 1/19/24, 2:32 p.m. ET: This story was updated with comments from paleontologist William Reyes.