26-01-2026
Scientific illustration by Eva Carret.
Paleontologist Alexandre Guillaume, a researcher at the NOVA School of Science and Technology | NOVA FCT and at the Lourinhã Museum, was part of the team that discovered a new amphibian species from the Upper Jurassic of Portugal: Nabia civiscientrix.
The research was supervised by Miguel Moreno-Azanza and Eduardo Puértolas-Pascal, from the University of Zaragoza (Spain), with collaboration from Marc Jones, from the Natural History Museum in London (United Kingdom), and Susan Evans, from University College London. The results were published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
During fieldwork in the Lourinhã region, isolated cranial bones and some vertebral and postcranial elements were collected—a fossil assemblage 150 million years old. This material marked the starting point for the new discovery.
“Alexandre Guillaume found many of them with the help of a Citizen Science project carried out at the Lourinhã Dinosaur Park and the Lourinhã Museum. Some of the better-known bones, such as the frontals or mandibles, were easily identified. But later, he realized that we had a much more complete view of the anatomy thanks to rarely found bones, such as the quadrates or the ilia,” explains Miguel Moreno-Azanza, professor at the University of Zaragoza. “It is always great to see local communities involved in this type of project, especially when they end up highlighting their own paleontological heritage so strongly.”
Part of the work also involved comparing the Lourinhã fossils with those from the Guimarota beds, also in Portugal and of the same age.
“The Guimarota material has been known for a long time,” explains Alexandre Guillaume, researcher at NOVA FCT. “We knew it represented a new species, which had always been considered as such by other paleontologists. But our previous study of the frontal bone challenged the original attribution to the genus Celtedens. So we had to investigate further.”
The study of additional bones ultimately led the researchers to describe a new genus and species, Nabia civiscientrix. It is the oldest albanerpetontid in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the oldest in the world. “This new species highlights the herpetofauna present in Lourinhã during the Upper Jurassic, 150 million years ago,” adds Guillaume.
Indeed, Lourinhã is well known for its dinosaurs, such as Lourinhanosaurus, Hesperonyx, and Miragaia, but a vast diversity of small animals—still largely unknown—also lived at their feet. Among them were the enigmatic Albanerpetontidae: a group of extinct lissamphibians (which includes modern amphibians) that resembled small salamanders—less than 5 cm long—with a ballistic tongue-feeding system like that of chameleons, dry, scaly skin, keratin-like claws, and eyelids.
Several of the best-preserved specimens from Lourinhã were sent to England for micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scanning in London, with Professors Marc Jones and Susan Evans. This process produced 3D models of the bones, which were used by the researchers to illustrate and describe them in detail, allowing a comprehensive revision of albanerpetontid anatomy.
“Until recently, studies generally focused on a limited set of easily recognizable bones, because for a long time we did not have complete or articulated specimens, and several bones were not illustrated and therefore not identified,” laments Alexandre Guillaume. As a result, some species were described based on only a few bones and could not later be compared with more complete specimens in which those bones were missing or poorly preserved.
However, based on observations by Alexandre Guillaume and Susan Evans from the new material and other specimens worldwide, the researchers proposed a new morphological dataset for future analyses, implementing new characters and updating existing ones—one of the main outcomes of this work.
“I invite everyone to take a closer look at these small, often overlooked bones, so that together we can better understand what these small amphibians were like. This is only the first step,” concludes Alexandre Guillaume.
