WATCH NOW: Amazing 3D image of 99-million-year-old species!

These reptiles will either pique your interest or leave your skin crawling.

Roughly 99-million-years ago, twelve creatures were eternally entombed by mistake. When they were originally discovered, they were kept in a private collection and remained hidden from the public - until now.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The "creatures" are different species of lizards, each of which was caught in the sticky tree resin that fossilizes into amber, effectively preserving its victim.

When the twelve amber-encased lizards were donated to the American Museum of Natural History, scientists were given permission to use CT scanners to collect images of the lizards, whose teeth, bones and even delicate scales were preserved.

Postdoctoral student Edward Stanley, co-author of a research paper focusing on the lizards that was published Friday in the journal Science Advances, wrote that the CT scans allowed them to "digitally dissect" each lizard and create a 3D image.

There was quite a bit of diversity discovered in the species, which Kevin de Queiroz, the curator of the reptile and amphibian collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said is not unexpected.

"There's a fair amount of diversity in the tropics now," de Queiroz stated. "So it's not too surprising that they've been diverse in the past."

Though it is not uncommon, de Queiroz admitted fossil records are not as reflective of the extreme diversity they are lucky enough to have with these specimens.

The oldest reptile caught in the amber is a dime-sized baby lizard believed to be a relative of the modern-day chameleon. Until its discovery, scientists only hypothesized chameleons split from their closest relatives during the mid-Cretaceous period and had no fossil evidence.

The fossils can now be used to give scientists a better idea of how and when different reptile species started to evolve.

Co-author Edward Stanley, a herpetology researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told The Christian Science Monitor, "The assemblage is cool because it has some examples which are really, really modern and then others which are really, really old, and then others in between [sic]."

Among the preserved species, researchers discovered feet made to help the reptiles stick to surfaces, much like the lizards of today.

Though scientists admit that many lizards spent plenty of time in trees, it is possible that they were actually land-dwellers who were forced to climb trees for food or to escape predators.

"This is just speculation on my part," George Poinar, an entomologist at Oregon State University, explained, but the lizards that were trapped within the amber and were discovered to be incomplete could be because predators ate the portion of the lizard's body that was not caught in the resin.

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