What it is
A small, slim animal shaped like a lizard, about 40 centimeters long with its tail, or sixteen inches. It lived in the wet forest at Chemnitz, in what is now Germany, about 291 million years ago. Five skeletons of it were found lying whole in the volcanic ash. Its name means climbing dwarf.
Built to climb
Its body was long, its hands and feet were big, and its claws were strongly curved. Together with where the skeletons lay, that points to an animal that lived up in the trees. The 2018 paper that named it called it the first tree-climbing 'pelycosaur' ever found. When the ash began to fall, the animals probably dropped from the branches, already dead or too stunned to get away.
Skin and scales
Some of the skeletons kept the outline of the skin, covered in small, rectangular scales very like a lizard's. That is rare for an animal this old. The team that described it in 2018 placed it on the mammal side of the family tree. Later studies have argued it belongs on the reptile side, and the question is still open.
Read the sources
- First arboreal 'pelycosaurs' (Synapsida: Varanopidae) from the early Permian Chemnitz Fossil Lagerstätte, SE Germany · Paläontologische Zeitschrift (2018)
- Paleo Profile: The Climbing Dwarf · Scientific American (2018)
- A snapshot of an early Permian ecosystem preserved by explosive volcanism: new results from the Chemnitz Petrified Forest · Palaios (2012)