The 2013 find in Southern New Mexico of a fossilized partial ѕkeɩetoп of this sail-backed, 5-foot-long creature, announced Wednesday by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, is forcing experts to rethink the evolution of scaly plant-eaters.
The fossil was found in March 2013 near Alamogordo by Ethan Schuth, who was on a field trip with a geology class from the University of Oklahoma. Field crews from the natural history museum in Albuquerque collected the fossilized bones and carefully removed the sandstone that covered them.
The gordodon is now displayed in the museum’s atrium. Its incomplete ѕkeɩetoп consists of the ѕkᴜɩɩ, lower jaws and all or parts of 21 vertebrae.
“This is one of the most remarkable discoveries I have been a part of,” museum paleontologist Spencer Lucas said.
The primitive herbivore walked the planet about 75 million years before dinosaurs, he said.
The gordodon had a specialized jаw and teeth with a gap in them, Lucas said. “Animals that have that gap today are selective feeders,” munching on particular types of vegetation.
“Previously, the oldest known animals with teeth as specialized as gordodon were found in rocks no older than 205 million years ago,” Lucas said.
“We don’t know very much about plant eаtіпɡ by reptiles,” he added. The discovery means “we are going to have to rethink what we thought we knew about how early reptiles became herbivores.”
It’s still not known exactly what was in the gordodon’s diet, he said. The reptile might have had fermented vegetation in its stomach, similar to how cows process food.