By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The fossil of a small reptile that inhabited Scotland during the age of dinosaurs 167 million years ago has scientists puzzled. It mixed snake-like traits and lizard-like traits. So was it an early ancestor of snakes or perhaps just an evolutionary oddball? Whatever the answer, it was a formidable little beast.

Researchers said this creature, named Breugnathair elgolensis, possessed teeth that were sharply curved and hook-like, as in snakes. And the way its teeth were implanted into its jaws and the inward-leaning angle of them relative to the jaws also were snake-like. But its body and head proportions were more lizard-like, including its well-developed limbs.

Breugnathair, which would have been around 12 inches (30 cm) long including its tail, live

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