From prehistoric resident to runaway pet: First tegu fossil found in the U.S.
Originally from South America, the charismatic tegu made its way to the United States via the pet trade of the 1990s. After wreaking havoc in Florida’s ecosystems, the exotic lizard was classified as an invasive species. But a recent discovery from the Florida Museum of Natural History reveals the reptiles are no strangers to the region — tegus were here millions of years before their modern relatives arrived in pet carriers.
Described in a new study in the Journal of Paleontology, this breakthrough came from a single, half-inch-wide vertebra fossil that was unearthed in the early 2000s and puzzled scientists for the next 20 years. Jason Bourque, now a fossil preparator in the museum’s vertebrate paleontology division, came across the peculiar fossil in the museum’s collection freshly out of graduate school.
“We have all these mystery boxes of fossil bones, so I was digging through, and I kept coming across this one vertebra,” Bourque said. “I could not figure out what it was. I put it away for a while. Then I’d come back and say: Is it a lizard? Is it a snake? In the back of my mind for years and years, it just sat there.”
The vertebra had been found in a fuller’s earth clay mine just north of the Florida border, after a tipoff from the local work crew prompted a visit from the museum’s paleontologists. There was just one catch: The mine was slated to close, and its quarry, along with any exposed fossils, would soon be filled in. Working against a deadline, the scientists excavated as many fossils as they could and brought them back to the museum, where the vertebra sat in storage, its identity unresolved.