Oldest reptile capable of detaching its tail to rescue life discovered

New Delhi : The Canadian researchers have discovered a 290-million-year old reptile who was capable of detaching its tail. The species has been tagged as the first known reptile with an ability to detach its body part.

Detaching tail from the body is believed to be their defensive mechanism to avoid being caught by prey animals.

"One of the ways captorhinids could do this was by having breakable tail vertebrae," explained Aaron LeBlanc from the University of Toronto, Canada.

The new species of lizard has been named Captorhinus. The researchers estimate its weight to be around 4 pounds, making it a smaller species compared to the ones living about 300 million years ago.

Captorhinus were omnivorous (eating both meat and plants) and had to search for their foods. 

Detaching tail and its tale

The lizard used to fool the attacker by dropping off their tail and make an escape from the dangerous site.

"If a predator grabbed hold of one of these reptiles, the vertebra would break at the crack and the tail would drop off, allowing the captorhinid to escape relatively unharmed," explained professor Robert Reisz from the University of Toronto.

The researchers concluded that this defensive mechanism was successful since the Captorhinus lizards were very common in the Early Permian era.