A couple years ago, field team member Brian Hebert made an amazing discovery along the coast of Cape Breton Island. A lycopsid stump like no other found yet! Inside a pair of varanopids, one large and one very small, curled up in denning position.
Artwork by Henry Sharpe.
This fossil represents a new earliest record of varanopids, Canada’s first varanopids, and most interestingly, apparently a new earliest record of extended parental care in an amniote, and even a tetrapod.
The pair were carefully prepared back in the lab by Arjan and myself, illustrated and analyzed. The results of that research were published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Email me for a copy!
