The Penedés Valley has been the setting where a team of researchers from the Catalan Institute of Paleontology (ICP) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) has discovered the first completely intact skull of a “Mediterranean blind shingles” , a new species of reptile that would have lived in the Iberian Peninsula about 12 million years ago .
The dating of this species has not been easy despite being the most complete fossil of this genus, since the remains were covered by a thick crust. "It was necessary to apply computerized tomography techniques to obtain a three-dimensional model in which the scab was digitally removed, since the preparation of such a small specimen would have endangered the integrity of the fossil," says Arnau Bolet, leader of the study .
Blind shingles had been partially found throughout Europe, so knowledge of their particularities was rather limited. Now, it is known that this species lived 11.6 million years ago in the Middle Miocene and lacked limbs due to its evolution and not because it belonged to the snake family.
The new species, discovered at the Abocador de Can Mata site, and whose skull measures only 11.3 millimeters , has been baptized as “Blanus mendezi” in honor of Josep Méndez, an ICP technician who recovered this fossil specimen during some work excavation in 2011 and whose discovery has been published in the magazine Plos One .
