Low water levels in Lake Powell have unveiled a treasure trove of "extremely rare" fossils belonging to a long-extinct mammal relative that inhabited North America 180 million years ago.
The newly unearthed fossils are the first-ever tritylodontid fossils found within the Navajo Sandstone, a geological formation established in a prehistoric desert of sand dunes, now known as the Glen Canyon Group.
Tritylodontids are a group of near-mammalian reptiles that lived during the Triassic and Jurassic periods, coexisting with early mammals and surviving a mass extinction event. The creatures varied in size, ranging from rat-sized to wolf-sized.
Described as "one of the most important fossil vertebrate discoveries in the United States this year" by National Park Service (NPS) officials, the fossils were discovered just in the nick of time. Researchers had a mere 120 days to retrieve the fossils before water levels returned to their regular state.
Officials collected hundreds of pounds of rock encasing bones and skeletons, which will be meticulously scanned and analyzed before joining the collections of the Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah.
Studying these fossils is expected to provide invaluable insights into how early mammal relatives thrived through the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic Period and subsequently diversified during the Jurassic Period.
Moreover, paleontologists have also stumbled upon a rare bone bed in the slightly older Kayenta Formation, located approximately 60 miles southeast of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. However, further details regarding this discovery remain undisclosed.
The recent revelation joins a string of extraordinary paleontological finds facilitated by fluctuating water levels, such as the 70 dinosaur tracks uncovered in Texas' Paluxy River in July, including one of the world's longest dinosaur tracks, at Dinosaur Valley State Park.
The study was published Monday in The Geology of the Intermountain West journal.