200-Million-Year-Old Weird 'Worm' Creature Finally Identified

[Judi Lynn]

By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | June 21, 2017 06:44am ET

200-Million-Year-Old Weird 'Worm' Creature Finally Identified

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A new fossil discovery links a bizarre modern amphibian to bizarre ancient amphibians with toilet-seat heads — and rescues a group of weird Triassic animals from their previous status as an evolutionary dead end.

The fossil represents a new species of caecilian, which are subterranean amphibians that look like nightmarishly giant worms. Members of this group lack limbs and have either no eyes or tiny, primitive eyes, since their ground-dwelling lifestyle affords little opportunity to see anyway. They do, however, have tiny needle-like teeth that allow them to attack prey like insects and worms. [See Images of Living Baby Caecilians]

The largest caecilian today, Caecilia thompsoni, is found only in Colombia and can grow to 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length. Most species aren't so gargantuan, though, which makes them hard to discover in the fossil record, Adam Huttenlocker, an assistant professor in anatomical science at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Rare find

In the 1990s, though, a paleontologist named Bryan Small discovered two caecilian skulls, one each in the Colorado counties of Eagle and Garfield, in the Rocky Mountains. A new examination of these fossils reveals they are the oldest caecilians ever found by at least 15 million years.

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