Mar 21, 2018
Have you heard of Ascendonanus? Mark Witton claims it has squamate-like scales
I’ve heard a little about it, but haven’t been able to get a copy of the full paper yet to check out the details.
But definite squamate-like scales in an early synapsid aren’t necessarily all that surprising -- fur and scales have been confirmed as homologous structures, after all, and there’s been some speculation that scales may therefore have been a shared ancestral feature for all amniotes.
The question now is when exactly the switch from scales to hair actually happened, since we know there was glandular skin in Estemmenosuchus and hair-like structures in Permian therapsids.