Earliest caecilian

The earliest-known caecilian is Funcusvermis gilmorei, which existed approximately 220 million years ago during the Late Triassic in what is today Arizona, USA. Caecilians are long, slender, superficially worm-like/snake-like amphibians, sometimes eyeless but jawed. Most species are fossorial (burrowing) in lifestyle, spending almost their entire time underground, but some freshwater aquatic species are also known. Whereas modern-day caecilian species are limbless, fossil remains of F. gilmorei show that it possessed small limbs. Its first documented fossils were unearthed in north-east Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park during a dig led by postgraduate palaeontology student Ben Kligman from Virginia Tech, within a geological layer known as the Chinle Formation. Its species was formally named and described by Kligman and co-workers in the journal Nature on 25 January 2023.

F. gilmorei constitutes the very first pre-Jurassic caecilian known to science, extending back in time the confirmed existence of this amphibian group by approximately 35 million years. It thereby supplants Eocaecilia micropodia, the previous holder (and which also existed in Arizona, around 185 million years ago, during the Early Jurassic).

Its scientific binomial name, Funcusvermis gilmorei, translates as "Gilmore's funky worm", which was derived from the 1972 song "Funky Worm" by American funk band Ohio Players, a song often played during the palaeontological dig that revealed this species, and also honours Ned Gilmore, collections manager at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.