Tiny eyes make a bizarre, ancient platypus-like reptile even weirder
The creature lived about 250 million years ago
My, what tiny eyes you had, Eretmorhipis carrolldongi.
Two newly found specimens of the mysterious, platypus-like reptile suggest that the ancient creature had very small eyes for its size, and may have hunted mainly by touch. That makes E. carrolldongi the oldest known amniote — a group that includes reptiles and mammals — to use a sense other than sight to find its prey, scientists report online January 24 in Scientific Reports.
E. carrolldongi, which lived about 250 million years ago, is one of numerous strange creatures dating to the Early Triassic described by scientists in recent years. It is part of an oddball array of marine reptiles called Hupehsuchia that lived in a vast lagoon spanning hundreds of kilometers across what’s now central China. That flourishing of forms, which came on the heels of the mass extinction at the end of the Permian Period 252 million years ago, suggests that marine reptiles diversified millions of years earlier than once thought, the researchers say.