The fossil was found in 2016 by a team led by Oxford University and National Museums Scotland. The actual fossil of Bellairsia gracilis, a fossil squamate from Middle Jurassic aged rocks from the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Analysing the new fossil alongside living and extinct fossil squamates confirms Bellairsia belongs to the ‘stem’ of the squamate family tree. Whereas medical scanners work at the millimetre scale, the Oxford University CT scanner revealed details down to a few tens of micrometres. The study ‘Synchrotron tomography of a stem-lizard elucidates early squamate anatomy’ has been published in the journal Nature.
