In the Canyonlands National Park, which is located in Utah, the remains of an animal unknown to science were found. It is worth noting that fossils of creatures that lived on land are incredibly rare in this area, reports Smithsonian magazine.
The age of the find reaches almost 300 million years. This specimen is considered unique and belongs to the Permian period. Experts have not yet been able to establish whether this animal has anything to do with mammals or reptiles.
Perhaps the fossil does belong to a new species that has not been studied before. But in order to give a definitive answer, it will be necessary to conduct a lot of additional research.
Today there is information that the creature belongs to the group of amniotes. It was vertebrate, had four limbs, reproduced by laying eggs and lived on land.
The incredible discovery was made by a park ranger in 2020. After some time, specialists from several different organizations united into one team in order to study the fossil in detail.
Moreover, the excavations were carried out relatively recently. The study showed that these remains are 50 million years older than anything else that has been found on the planet before.
They belong to that time period, from which fossils are found only in isolated cases in North America.
The fossil was located at the very bottom of the ravine, so it regularly suffered from erosion when the rainy season began.
They took it out and carefully cleaned it from dirt. In the near future, it is planned to study using computed tomography. Then the find will go to the Canyonlands National Park Museum.
