Rosa Rubicondior: Creationism in Crisis - A Trasitional Lizard-Snake - From 167 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

a, Life reconstruction of Breagnathair elgolensis based on measured proportions of NMS G.2023.7.1. b, Digital render of the bones as originally preserved in NMS G.2023.7.1, using information from the pilot scan (Supplementary Data 1 and 2). c–f, Digital renders of cervical vertebra (CEb in Extended Data Fig. 5) in left lateral (c), ventral (d), anterior (e) and posterior (f) views. g–i, Caudal vertebra (CAa in Extended Data Fig. 5) in left lateral (g), ventral (h) and anterior (i) views. Scale bars: 50 mm (b), 2 mm (c–i). Life reconstruction reproduced with permission from Mick Ellison (American Museum of Natural History).

Benson, R.B.J., Walsh, S.A., Griffiths, E.F. et al. (2025)

New Species of Ancient Hook-toothed Reptile Discovered | AMNH

A newly described Jurassic fossil from the Isle of Skye, Scotland, has revealed a remarkable “missing link” between lizards and snakes. The find, named Breugnathair elgolensis, provides important evidence of snake evolution and further undermines creationist claims that no transitional forms exist. The research has just been published in Nature and reported by the American Museum of Natural History.

For creationists, this week must feel much like any other, as science continues to produce paper after paper that refutes their beliefs, while not a single one provides a shred of evidence in support of creationism — whether young-Earth or old-Earth, whether invoking an interventionist deity who micro-manages every detail of the universe, or a distant creator who merely lit the blue touch-paper and now sits back to watch the results.

Science, of course, concerns itself only with material reality. It has no use for evidence-free superstitions or fairy tales of the supernatural — notions born of human imagination and the desire for narrative to fill the gaps in our knowledge and understanding. Creationists, therefore, must rely on self-delusion and the irrational belief in a false dichotomy of “facts versus faith”, where even the slightest perceived flaw in science supposedly means total failure and victory for faith by default.

Sadly for creationists, that long-dreamed-of day when science collapses and their god descends triumphantly from the skies in a chariot — looking for all the world like a Bronze Age tribal despot — seems increasingly remote. Science continues to validate the scientific method and to build knowledge upon verifiable evidence, always willing to revise and refine its understanding in light of new discoveries. One such discovery is that of a transitional Jurassic reptile showing a mosaic of lizard and snake features — exactly what we would expect if snakes and lizards share a common ancestor. The problem with pinning one’s hopes on a false dichotomy that depends on science failing is that every new discovery only strengthens science and renders the alternative ever more irrelevant and untenable.

The troublesome fossil for creationists was discovered about ten years ago on the Isle of Skye, in the Inner Hebrides off Scotland’s west coast, by Roger Benson, Macaulay Curator of the American Museum of Natural History, and his colleagues. Named Breugnathair elgolensis — a Latinised form of the Scots Gaelic for “false snake of Elgol” — it has now been described in an open-access paper in Nature.

Main Findings of the Nature Paper.

Breugnathair elgolensis lived around 166 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic period, on what is now the Isle of Skye, Scotland.

The fossil shows a unique combination of features typical of both lizards and early snakes — a “mosaic” form predicted by evolutionary theory.

It retains limbs and a well-developed pelvis like those of lizards, but also shows snake-like adaptations in the skull and jaw that suggest increased flexibility and early specialisation for feeding.

CT scans of the fossil revealed internal skull structures transitional between known lizards and later true snakes, helping fill a 20-million-year gap in the fossil record of snake origins.

This discovery strengthens the case that snakes evolved from terrestrial lizard ancestors rather than from marine reptiles.

Geological Context: Skye and the Kilmaluag Formation

Location and Stratigraphy

According to the Wikipedia entry on Breugnathair, the holotype specimen (NMS G.2023.7.1) comes from outcrops of the Kilmaluag Formation, north of the village of Elgol on the Strathaird Peninsula, Isle of Skye. [1.1]
The Kilmaluag Formation is a Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) unit that lies within the Great Estuarine Group in the Inner Hebrides. [2.1]
Its deposition is dated to around ~167 million years ago (i.e. Bathonian) — the same approximate age given for the fossil. [2.1]

Lithology, Environment of Deposition, and Facies

The Kilmaluag Formation consists of finely layered sandstones, silts, mudstones, and dolomitised limestones. [2.1]
It’s interpreted as having formed in a low-salinity, freshwater-influenced lagoonal environment (i.e. marginal to estuarine settings). [2.1]
During regressions (when water levels dropped), dolomitised limestone beds and desiccation cracks appear in the stratigraphy; during transgressions (when water encroached), finer silts and muds accumulated. [2.1]
Occasional shoreline conditions are signalled by ripple-marked sandstones within the formation. [2.1]
The formation is described as having two facies:

A clastic facies in the Sea of the Hebrides basin on northern Skye
An argillaceous limestone facies in the Inner Hebrides basin (including the Strathaird peninsula, where Elgol lies) [2.1]

Associated Fossils and Paleo-assemblage

The Kilmaluag is quite fossiliferous: vertebrates recorded include fish, small reptiles, amphibians, mammals, crocodylomorphs, and even dinosaur remains (teeth, partial bones) [2.1]
Oyster beds, algal limestones, and other marine-brackish indicators appear in overlying or adjacent formations (e.g. the Duntulm Formation, which lies above Kilmaluag) and in strata within the same Great Estuarine Group. [3.1]

Regional Jurassic Geology & Relevance to the Fossil

Skye is a globally significant Middle Jurassic fossil locality; many dinosaur footprints and other fauna are recorded from Jurassic coastal and lagoonal deposits. [4.1]
In the Jurassic configuration, Skye was part of the southern margin of Pangea (before further rifting), and sedimentation on Skye comprised alternating depositional episodes, interrupted by volcanic intrusions (sills) that affected the sedimentary layers. [4.1]
Because the fossil is in the Kilmaluag Formation (i.e. lagoonal / low-salinity environment), that suggests Breugnathair elgolensis lived in or near freshwater-influenced or coastal-lagoon settings, not in deep marine or fully terrestrial mountain zones. The fauna associated with Kilmaluag includes freshwater faunas (ostracods, bivalves) consistent with such settings. [2.1]

Gaps and Speculations (What We Don’t Know Yet)

The publicly available news and summary pieces don’t clearly state the precise bed or horizon (e.g. meter-level stratigraphic position) within the Kilmaluag unit from which Breugnathair was recovered.
It’s unclear whether the fossil lay in more clastic-dominated facies or argillaceous-limestone facies (i.e. whether it was closer to the shoreline or deeper lagoonal part).
The taphonomic pathway (how the animal came to be preserved — e.g. in a flood, death near the margin, transport) is not yet elaborated in the summaries I found.
The influence of volcanic intrusions or diagenetic alteration associated with sills (common on Skye) on the fossil or local stratigraphy is not mentioned in the accessible sources.

The discovery is also discussed in a news blog from the American Museum of Natural History.

Researchers Discover New Species of Ancient Hook-toothed Reptile
With python-like hooked teeth and a body similar to a gecko’s, a newly described Jurassic reptile has links to the origins of lizards and snakes.

A new study detailing the new species, which lived about 167 million years ago and is one of the oldest relatively complete fossil lizards yet discovered, was published this week in the journal Nature by an international team of researchers from the Museum, the United Kingdom, France, and South Africa.
Nearly 10 years ago, Museum Macaulay Curator Roger Benson and his colleagues, including Stig Walsh from the National Museums Scotland, were on their final part of an expedition on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, where they had been exploring the same limestone platform for multiple days.

Following a water break and a comment from Benson’s student about how they likely wouldn’t find anything because there were no unexplored spots left, Walsh walked about 15 feet and spotted a fossil—which began a years-long study of what turned out to be the new species, later named Breugnathair elgolensis. This Gaelic name means “false snake of Elgol,” referencing the area where it was found and its unusual characteristics: snake-like jaws with curved teeth and the short body and fully formed limbs of a lizard.

Snakes are remarkable animals that evolved long, limbless bodies from lizard-like ancestors. Breugnathair has snake-like features of the teeth and jaws, but in other ways, it is surprisingly primitive. This might be telling us that snake ancestors were very different to what we expected, or it could instead be evidence that snake-like predatory habits evolved separately in a primitive, extinct group.

Roger B. J. Benson, lead author
Division of Paleontology
American Museum of Natural History
New York, NY, USA.

Lizards and snakes together form a group called squamates, and the researchers placed Breugnathair in a new group of extinct, predatory squamates called Parviraptoridae, which was previously known only from more incomplete fossils.

I first described parviraptorids some 30 years ago based on more fragmentary material, so it’s a bit like finding the top of the jigsaw box many years after you puzzled out the original picture from a handful of pieces. The mosaic of primitive and specialized features we find in parviraptorids, as demonstrated by this new specimen, is an important reminder that evolutionary paths can be unpredictable.

Susan E. Evans, co-lead author
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology
University College London, UK.
Through computed tomography and high-powered x-ray imaging at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, the researchers determined how Breugnathair likely appeared in life. Nearly 16 inches long from head to tail, Breugnathair was one of the largest lizards in its ecosystem, where it likely preyed on smaller lizards, early mammals, and other vertebrates, like young dinosaurs. |

Because parviraptorids are thought by some to be the first snakes, the researchers explored whether Breugnathair could be a lizard-like ancestor of snakes. But its unusual mixture of features and the lack of other fossils tied to early squamate evolution prevented them from reaching a conclusive answer. Another possibility is that Breugnathair could be a stem-squamate, a predecessor of all lizards and snakes, that independently evolved snake-like teeth and jaws.

This fossil gets us quite far, but it doesn’t get us all of the way. However, it makes us even more excited about the possibility of figuring out where snakes come from.

Roger B. J. Benson.

Publication:
Benson, R.B.J., Walsh, S.A., Griffiths, E.F. et al.
Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate.
Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09566-y

Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate
Roger B. J. Benson, Stig A. Walsh, Elizabeth F. Griffiths, Zoe T. Kulik, Jennifer Botha, Vincent Fernandez, Jason J. Head & Susan E. Evans
Nature (2025)

Abstract
Squamates (lizards and snakes) comprise almost 12,000 living species, with wide ecological diversity and a crown group that originated around 190 million years ago^1,2. Conflict between morphology and molecular phylogenies indicates a complex pattern of anatomical transformations during early squamate evolution, which remains poorly understood owing to the scarcity of early fossil taxa^1,3. Here we present Breugnathair elgolensis gen. et sp. nov., based on a new skeleton from the Middle Jurassic epoch (167 million years ago) of Scotland, which is among the oldest relatively complete fossil squamates. Breugnathair is placed in a new family, Parviraptoridae, an enigmatic group with potential importance for snake origins, that was previously known from very incomplete remains. It displays a mosaic of anatomical traits that is not present in living groups, with head and body proportions similar to varanids (monitor lizards) and snake-like features of the teeth and jaws, alongside primitive traits shared with early-diverging groups such as gekkotans. Phylogenetic analyses of multiple datasets return conflicting results, with parviraptorids either as early toxicoferans (and potentially stem snakes) or as stem squamates that convergently evolved snake-like dental and mandibular traits related to feeding. These findings indicate high levels of homoplasy and experimentation during the initial radiation of squamates and highlight the potential importance of convergent morphological transformations during deep evolutionary divergences.

Main
Squamates (lizards and snakes) diverged from their closest living relative, the tuatara (Sphenodon), by the early Triassic period¹, and molecular clocks suggest that their crown group originated by the Early Jurassic epoch, around 190 million years ago² (Ma). However, confident records of crown- or near-crown squamates are not known before the Middle Jurassic1,3, and patterns of ecological diversification during early squamate evolution remain poorly understood. There is currently little consensus on the relationships of many early squamate fossils (for example, refs. ^1,4,5,6), and difficulties in resolving the phylogenetic affinities of these specimens are compounded by the large incongruence between morphological and molecular hypotheses of squamate evolution2.

Parviraptorids are an enigmatic group of extinct, predatory squamates that persisted for more than 20 million years, from the Middle Jurassic–Early Cretaceous epoch of North America and Europe. Recent works have proposed that parviraptorids may be the earliest members of the snake stem lineage⁷. However, they have also been identified at various times as anguimorphs⁸, gekkonomorphs^9,10, members of a ‘scincomorph’-anguimorph group¹¹, or potentially as stem squamates¹². These hypotheses have been difficult to evaluate, because parviraptorid specimens so far are relatively incomplete, leaving important anatomical questions unanswered, including the extent to which bones from across the skeleton share features with snakes or other groups, and whether or not parviraptorids had long, limbless (or limb-reduced) bodies like snakes.

Recent work retained only the most snake-like elements within the parviraptorid hypodigm—primarily tooth-bearing bones and vertebrae⁷. However, earlier works reported other bones that together show a unique combination of snake-like and non-snake-like features^8,13. If parviraptorids are stem snakes, then this may provide evidence of mosaic evolutionary changes along the snake stem lineage. Alternatively, it may indicate that parviraptorids are not closely related to snakes, and evolved their snake-like features convergently. However, discussion of these evolutionary hypotheses has been eclipsed by concerns that some of the more informative specimens may be chimeric associations of multiple taxa⁷ (Supplementary Discussion). Here we report a relatively complete specimen of an early parviraptorid (Fig. 1 and Extended Data Fig.1) that resolves these concerns, adds substantially to knowledge of parviraptorid anatomy, and limits hypotheses of their phylogenetic affinities and significance for early squamate evolution.

Fig. 1: Reconstruction of Breagnathair elgolensis from NMS G.2023.7.1.

a, Life reconstruction of Breagnathair elgolensis based on measured proportions of NMS G.2023.7.1. b, Digital render of the bones as originally preserved in NMS G.2023.7.1, using information from the pilot scan (Supplementary Data 1 and 2). c–f, Digital renders of cervical vertebra (CEb in Extended Data Fig. 5) in left lateral (c), ventral (d), anterior (e) and posterior (f) views. g–i, Caudal vertebra (CAa in Extended Data Fig. 5) in left lateral (g), ventral (h) and anterior (i) views. Scale bars: 50 mm (b), 2 mm (c–i). Life reconstruction reproduced with permission from Mick Ellison (American Museum of Natural History).

Systematic palaeontology

Pan-Squamata Gauthier & de Queiroz, 2020 ¹²

Parviraptoridae new family

Diagnosis. Squamates (or stem squamates) with well-developed limbs and a unique combination of primitive and derived traits including paired, shallow, unsculptured parietals enclosing a parietal foramen and possessing a postparietal (posteromedian) process; teeth on all palatal bones; double tooth row on palatine and absence of a choanal fossa; no vomer–maxillary contact; strongly recurved marginal teeth implanted in shallow rounded sockets and separated by interdental ridges; no erosion of mature teeth by replacements; and procoelous vertebrae in adults, with a weakly developed zygosphene–zygantral system.

Comment. The term ‘parviraptorid’ has been used informally in previous works (for example, ref. ⁷), but has not been erected formally as we do here.

Included taxa. Parviraptor estesi (type genus; Extended Data Figs. 2 and 3), Diablophis gilmorei, Portugalophis lignites and Breugnathair elgolensis gen. et sp. nov., as well as the holotype and at least some specimens referred to the nomen dubium Eophis underwoodi, from the Middle Jurassic of Kirtlington⁸ (Extended Data Fig. 4 and Supplementary Discussion).

Breugnathair elgolensis gen. et sp. nov.

Etymology. breug-nathair (brjiag Nahɪrj; adapted from Scottish Gaelic): false snake; specific name comes from the locality of discovery, north of the village of Elgol on the Strathaird Peninsula of the Isle of Skye.

Holotype. NMS (National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK) G.2023.7.1, a disarticulated partial skeleton from the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian, 166 Ma) Kilmaluag Formation of the Elgol Coast SSSI14, collected in 2015 under permit from NatureScot, with permission from the landowner John Muir Trust.

Diagnosis. Parviraptorid that differs from Early Cretaceous Parviraptor estesi in having proportionally narrower parietals that bear a nuchal shelf and lack a deep ventral concavity between the base of the postparietal process and the base of the supratemporal process; differs from Late Jurassic Portugalophis lignites by having shorter interdental ridges and more sharply recurved tooth crowns; and differs from Late Jurassic Diablophis gilmorei in the less bulbous morphology of tooth bases, and substantially more recurved crowns (Supplementary Discussion).

Benson, R.B.J., Walsh, S.A., Griffiths, E.F. et al.
Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate.
Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09566-y

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

The Kilmaluag Formation on Skye, where Breugnathair elgolensis was found, represents a series of lagoonal and low-salinity deposits laid down some 166–167 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic. At that time, the area was a network of shallow coastal lagoons and mudflats teeming with life — fish, amphibians, small reptiles, and early mammals — a perfect environment for preserving delicate remains such as those of this small, transitional reptile. The fossil was entombed in fine-grained sediments that later lithified into the limestones and mudstones we now find exposed around Elgol, offering a remarkably detailed glimpse into an ancient ecosystem where the line between land and water was constantly shifting.

This discovery, like so many others from the Isle of Skye, further cements the island’s reputation as one of the richest Jurassic fossil sites in Europe. More importantly, it adds yet another piece to the grand evolutionary puzzle, confirming that snakes evolved gradually from lizard-like ancestors, with intermediate forms bridging the anatomical gap. Each such find strengthens the framework of evolutionary biology, showing once again that the predictive power of science lies in its capacity to explain, refine, and expand — not to defend dogma.

For creationists, however, every fossil like Breugnathair elgolensis is another awkward reminder that their cherished narratives have no place in the fossil record. Where creationism offers myth and assertion, science provides evidence and explanation — and with every discovery unearthed from rocks such as those on Skye, the gap between faith-based denial and evidence-based understanding grows ever wider.

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