290-Million-Year-Old Reptile Fossil Found In Germany’s Thuringian Forest

Key Takeaways and Core Findings

• Paleontologists discovered the earliest known fossilized cloaca in a 290-million-year-old reptile trace.
• The specimen belongs to a newly described species named Cabarzichnus pulchrus from the Thuringian Forest in Germany.
• This find predates the previous record of a fossilized cloacal vent by approximately 170 million years.
• The fossil includes clear impressions of keratin belly scales that served as armor for the small reptile.

Most people look at the stars to feel small but I find the same vertigo in a patch of German mud.

A tiny reptile stopped to rest its belly on a silt bank during the Early Permian. It moved away. The mud hardened into stone. I think about the sheer luck required for a skin impression to survive the crushing weight of 290 million years. This creature measured only nine centimeters in length. It was a minor occupant of the Goldlauter Formation. Yet its brief pause left a signature of soft tissue that usually vanishes into the rot of history.

Lorenzo Marchetti of the German Natural History Museum in Berlin noted that these structures become more exceptional the further we look into the past. I saw the images of the scales. They are precise. Keratin shields protected the belly of the beast. But the base of the tail holds the real prize. Scientists identified a vent-like opening surrounded by modified scales.

This is a cloaca. It served as a single exit for waste or the delivery of eggs or the mechanics of reproduction.

And the timing of this discovery shifts our understanding of amniote evolution. Before this find the oldest record belonged to a Psittacosaurus from a mere 120 million years ago. This new evidence pushes the record back through the Triassic and into the Permian. ScienceAlert provided details on this topic which highlight how the find confirms long-held theories about early reptile anatomy.

The physical reality of the cloaca proves these ancient lineages shared the same basic biological blueprints we see in modern birds and lizards. I noticed the clarity of the fossilized armor. Evolution perfected these scales early. The animal pushed its weight into the sediment and left a map of its underside. But the earth kept the map.

It waited for a human with a lens to find it.

The Thuringian Forest Basin is a vault of biological history. Researchers named the trace fossil Cabarzichnus pulchrus to honor the beauty of the impression. I find it optimistic that such a delicate moment can endure the tectonic shifts of our planet. The scales are not just shapes.

They are data points for the development of skin. We often focus on bones. Bones are sturdy. Skin is fleeting. This fossil breaks the rule of decay. It offers a glimpse into a Tuesday afternoon in a swamp nearly 300 million years ago. But the creature is gone. Only the ghost of its exit remains.

The Pulse

The scientific community is currently buzzing with an almost electric sense of wonder over the preservation of such mundane biological details.

This discovery has turned a simple resting trace into a significant milestone for evolutionary biology. There is a growing excitement that other sedimentary formations might hold similar soft-tissue secrets once thought lost to time. I feel a renewed hope for what remains hidden in the crust of the earth.

Checklist of Evidence and Statistics

• Age of fossil: 290 million years
• Estimated length of reptile: 9 centimeters
• Location: Goldlauter Formation in the Thuringian Forest
• Previous record holder: Psittacosaurus at 120 million years
• Material of belly scales: Hard keratin
• Classification: Cabarzichnus pulchrus (newly described species)
• Biological significance: Earliest fossil record of a cloacal vent in amniotes

Additional Reads

• The Permian Extinction and the Survival of Amniotes
• Soft Tissue Preservation in Sedimentary Rocks
• The Evolution of Keratinized Skin Structures
• Ichnology: The Study of Trace Fossils and Animal Behavior