240 million-year-old fossil of salamander-like creature with ‘gnarly enamel’ unearthed in rocks for backyard wall

Scientists have recognized a 240 million-year-old giant-salamander-like creature that was first unearthed many years in the past in rocks meant for a backyard wall in Australia. The species, Arenaerpeton supinatus — which means “supine sand creeper” — was an estimated 4 ft (1.2 meters) lengthy and inhabited rivers in what’s now the Sydney Basin in the course of the Triassic interval (251.9 million to 201.3 million years in the past), in accordance with a research printed Aug. 3 within the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

“This fossil is a singular instance of a bunch of extinct animals referred to as the temnospondyls, which lived earlier than and in the course of the time of the dinosaurs,” research lead writer Lachlan Hart, a doctoral scholar in vertebrate paleontology on the College of New South Wales and the Australian Museum, stated in a assertion.