Caecilian amphibians don't have the glamour of dinosaurs, but there used
to be an 87 million year gap in their fossil record. They are a lineage
that lost their limbs and took up burrowing. The new fossil cuts the
existing gap in half. It wasn't really a gap, but a prediction from the
DNA evidence. The origin of Caecilians is expected to have occurred
over 80 million years before the then oldest fossil evidence, so this
fossil just demonstrates that Caecilians existed long before we
previously had fossil evidence for their existence. Tiktallik (the
missing link lobefin fish) existed around 376 million years ago and they
expect Caecilians to have branched off from other amphibians between 270 million and 370 million years ago.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230125121550.htm
Ron Okimoto
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