The tail of a lizard from 99 million years ago preserved in amber

The exceptional quality of a lizard's tail trapped in amber, dating back 99 million years, reveals a capacity for caudal autotomy. This discovery, from the Kachin deposit in Myanmar, constitutes the first living proof of this mechanism in vertebrates. The study published in Palaeontologia electronica highlights indicators, such as a distinct muscular ring, that exclude accidental breakage. Although fossils of lizards show separated tails, they do not allow us to determine how this separation occurred.