Cutting-edge analysis of prehistoric teeth sheds new light on the diets of lizards and snakes

Modern and fossil lizards have many different tooth types. These are linked to different diets and can be used to assess dietary diversity through time in fossils. Tom Stubbs New research has revealed that the diets of early lizards and snakes, which lived alongside dinosaurs around 100 million years ago, were more varied and advanced than previously thought. The study, led by the University of Bristol and published in Royal Society ,showed lizards, snakes, and mosasaurs in the Cretaceous period already had the full spectrum of diet types, including flesh-eating and plant-based, which they have today. There are currently some 10,000 species of lizards and snakes, known collectively as squamates. It was originally understood their great diversity was acquired only after the extinction of dinosaurs, but the findings demonstrate for the first time that squamates had modern levels of dietary specialisation 100 million years ago. Fossils of lizards and snakes are quite rare in the Mesozoic, the age of dinosaurs and reptiles.