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IMAGE: Modern and fossil lizards have many different tooth types. These are linked to different diets and can be used to assess dietary diversity through time in fossils.
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Credit: Tom Stubbs
New research has revealed that the diets of early lizards and snakes, which lived alongside dinosaurs around 100 million years ago, were more varied and advanced than previously thought.
The study, led by the University of Bristol and published in
Royal Society Open Science, showed lizards, snakes, and mosasaurs in the Cretaceous period already had the full spectrum of diet types, including flesh-eating and plant-based, which they have today.