The 345-Million-Year-Old Landmark Fossil “Lizzie” Was Not a Reptile — It Had Gills and a Fish-Like Mouth

Fossil Long Hailed As The "World’s Oldest Reptile" Turns Out Isn’t Actually Reptilian At All

What do you do when your entire identity is snatched away from you? Probably not much when you’ve been dead for 345 million years.

345-million-year-old reptile Lizzie was not a reptile at all, X-rays reveal

The findings were published in Nature by researchers at the University of Oxford and the American Museum of Natural History.

The 345-Million-Year-Old Landmark Fossil “Lizzie” Was Not a Reptile — It Had Gills and a Fish-Like Mouth

Learn how new X-ray scans reveal that a famous Scottish fossil is changing our understanding of how four-legged animals evolved.

Fossil long known as world’s oldest reptile dethroned

For nearly 30 years, a small fossil from Scotland has been celebrated as one of the earliest known reptiles. A new study is rewriting that story.

Scotland’s famous ‘Lizzie’ fossil was not the early reptile scientists thought

X-ray scans reveal that famed “early reptile” Westlothiana had gills and belonged to a far more primitive aquatic tetrapod lineage.

Hidden gills and fish-like teeth dethrone Scotland's famed oldest

For more than three decades, a small, crushed fossil from Scotland has occupied a place of extraordinary importance in the story of vertebrate evolution. Known to paleontologists around the world by its affectionate nickname, Lizzie, the 345-million-year-old specimen of Westlothiana lizziae was long celebrated as one of the earliest known reptiles and frequently cited as a landmark in discussions of when and how amniotes—the group that includes …