For more than a century, biologists assumed that the bony plates embedded in the skin of lizards – like natural chain mail – were an ancient feature that some lineages inherited and others later lost.

Lizards are ancient creatures. They were around before the dinosaurs and persisted long after dinosaurs went extinct. We’ve now found they are 35 million years older than we thought they were.

A single vertebra dug out of a mine in southern Georgia has been used to identified a new genus and new species of lizard. Photo from Calin Razvan Fotograf via Unsplash An unidentified bone pulled ...

Gilmore, Charles W. 1919. "Dimetrodon gigas, a giant spiny lizard from Texas bone beds." Scientific American Supplement, (2271) 20, 21, 3 figs.