Since the material used to describe the new species was collected through a Citizen Science project carried out at the Lourinhã Dinosaur Park and the Lourinhã Museum, the researchers chose the name Nabia civiscientrix for the new species, which was also announced by the Natural History Museum in London.

Nabia civiscientrix lived 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic period, a period whose dinosaur diversity is well documented, but not that of the creatures that crawled at their feet, explained the palaeontologist from the Nova University of Lisbon (UNL) and the Lourinhã Museum.

Measuring less than five centimetres in length and possessing a ballistic tongue-like feeding system similar to that of modern chameleons, Nabia civiscientrix is ​​the oldest known amphibian of its kind found in Portugal. Researchers believe the new data can help to better understand the ecosystem from which it originated.

The remains of the best-preserved specimens found in Lourinhã were sent to London for micro-computed tomography, with the assistance of professors Marc Jones of the Natural History Museum (UK) and Susan Evans of University College London.

"Until recently, studies focused on a limited set of easily recognisable 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.

Thus, some species could be described based on only a few bones, but then could not be compared with more complete specimens in which those bones would be missing or poorly preserved.

However, based on observations from the new material and other specimens worldwide, the researchers proposed a new set of morphological data for future analyses, adding new characteristics and updating previous ones, which constitutes one of the main results of this work, according to the researchers.

The research work was supervised by Miguel Moreno-Azanza and Eduardo Puertolas-Pascal, from the University of Zaragoza (Spain).