#eocaecilia

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Amphibian August #30 -- Eocaecilia

Caecilians are the most obscure group of living lissamphibians, found only in the tropics and rarely seen by humans. Long-bodied and limbless, with reduced eyes and skin folds that give them a segmented appearance, they look like large worms and are mostly subterranean burrowers (with the exception of one fully aquatic eel-like family). A lot about them is still unknown, since they’re so secretive and are rarely studied, but some of their biology is pretty unique -- including sensory tentacles, eyes that can move out of their skulls, and babies eating their mother’s skin.

Eocaecilia was the one of the earliest known relatives of these bizarre amphibians, living during the Early Jurassic of North America (~196-183 mya). About 15cm long (6″), it still had small limbs with three digits each and fairly well-developed eyes, and closely resembled some of the earlier lepospondyls like microsaurs and lysorophians. It may or may not have been descended from one of these groups, and without more fossil evidence we can’t know for certain either way.

It wasn’t as highly adapted for burrowing as its modern relatives, but instead may have moved around under leaf litter and in shallow sandy soil like some similarly-shaped modern lizards.