Old is a relative term, especially in archaeology. For instance, no variation of the word old can adequately express the antiquity of the 288-million-year-old example of fossilized skin recently uncovered in the U.S. Midwest. It's older than almost everything - certainly more than any skin samples previously discovered.
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It's older than any skin found before by at least 21 million years. It's older than the existence of dinosaurs, older than the new fossils study that completely alters the evolution timeline. Although it comes from the state of Oklahoma, it's older even than what is now North America since it comes from a time before it broke off from the supercontinent Pangea.
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What Was Discovered?
A small band of skin from an ancient amniote
Paleontologists recently discovered the well-preserved skin of a lizard-like amniote known as captorhinus aguti in Richards Spur, a cave system near Elgin in Comanche County, Oklahoma. The small fragment was very tiny - about the size of a human fingernail - and only survived from the Paleozoic Era into modern times due to site-specific peculiarities where it was found.
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Richards Spur is remarkable for its preservative qualities due to clay-rich sediment in its limestone caves and toxic anoxic (zero oxygen) conditions caused by oil seeps, which cover fossils in petroleum oil that prevent decay.
"It's an exceptional locality," noted Ethan D. Mooney (via Smithsonian ), a University of Toronto paleontologist who was one of five authors of the study of the fossil published in the January 22, 2024, issue of Current Biology .
As a result of its preservative qualities, Richards Spur is a hotbed for fossil research and several other significant finds have been uncovered there. However, the skin is the most important find of all.
What was found:
Skin from captorhinus aguti, an ancient amniote
Where the skin was discovered:
Richards Spur cave system in Oklahoma
Age of the fossilized skin:
288 million years old
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Why This Discovery Is Significant
The fossilized remains help to explain how skin evolved
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The fact that skin was discovered this old is mind-boggling. Skin is notoriously hard to preserve. It decays or is consumed by scavengers. No skin has ever been found from this antiquity - the Permian Period of the Paleozoic Age - and the Russian discovery of a sample 21 million years younger has yet to be verified as skin. That being the case, the Oklahoma find predates any other skin discovery by 130 million years.
That alone is amazing. But so too is the quality of the sample of epidermal tissue, which should help to answer several questions about the development of skin in general.
This amniote species lived so long ago that it is thought to have been one of the first creatures that crawled out of the sea to live entirely on land.
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Captorhinus aguti's bumpy layer of non-overlapping skin, similar to that of a crocodile, was thus an essential innovation that allowed for the evolution of later animals such as the stegosaurus, which provided the largest and most expensive dino fossil, or of other fascinating fossil finds of the 21st century. Indeed, ancient captorhinus aguti paved the way for the development of skin for many animals, including birds and mammals such as humans.
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Captorhinus Aguti & Its Oklahoma Home
The discovery was made at Richards Spur in the southwestern part of the state
Captorhinus
Over 18 million people visit the Sooner State annually to see attractions like the most beautiful towns in Oklahoma or to visit the Spiro Mounds, the only archaeological site open to the public. The Dolese Brothers Limestone Quarry at Richards Spur, where the ancient amniote skin was discovered, is not open to the public.
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But as noted, it's a mecca for paleontologists seeking Permian fossils. The quarry is in the southwestern part of the state, about 80 miles from Oklahoma City near Elgin (population 3,630).
As for captorhinus aguti, the species from which the skin sample was sourced, it went extinct long ago. About 251 million years ago or so, before the dinosaurs ever existed. It was a lizard-like invertebrate only a foot long.
Later reptiles had stronger jaws and were more efficient at chewing food, but captorhinus aguti was one of the earliest examples of an animal with laterality; meaning, like modern-day cats and chickens, it preferred chewing food on the right side of its mouth.
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